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VOL 44/04 11.22.2017
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A LY S S A W A L K E R
FINDINGS
BTS: Cover shoot with JoAnn Schinderle
WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 44, ISSUE 4.
Nate Silver thinks Oregon is the least corrupt state in America. 4
The former governor of Oregon must explain his influencepeddling scandal to a very annoyed ethics panel in January. 7 Christian conservatives are rallying behind a judge accused of bullying his son’s soccer referee. 8
Portland’s funniest comic has a lot of good jokes about menstrual
If you want to buy a brass heart pendant that reads, “Eat A Dick,” there is a place. 21 Bill Murray played in a cigarthemed garage-rock band as a teenager. 31 A proper Old Portland dive bar can be identified by the smell of piss in the carpet. 41 How stoned are you right now?
How about now? Your phone can tell you. 43
blood. 14
ON THE COVER:
OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:
Portland’s funniest person: JoAnn Schinderle, by Hilary Sander.
The Bundy gang was found not guilty (a year ago).
STAFF Editor & Publisher Mark Zusman EDITORIAL News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Katie Shepherd Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Nicole Groessel Stage & Screen Editor Shannon Gormley Projects Editor Matthew Korfhage Music Editor Matthew Singer
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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DIALOGUE Last week, WW told the story of Kim Bradley, who for decades endured domestic abuse even as she and her husband, John, traveled in the highest circles of Portland society (“For 30 Years, Kim Bradley Hid from Her Husband,” WW, Nov. 15, 2017). Our reporting also examined why victims find it hard to leave abusive relationships, and where Oregon’s laws fail survivors. Here’s what readers had to say about the story. Melody Ghormley, via Facebook: “Domestic abuse by rich, influential, ‘important’ men is not rare. This is an important article by Willamette Week. I wonder if the Big O would have published it.” Bethany Rydmark, via Twitter: “Lunchtime reading. I wonder about this all the time, working in circles of wealthy people with outwardly ‘perfect’ lives. Brokenness knows no class boundaries.”
TenebreaRea, in response: “This is an article about a woman who was physically abused for years. At what point in reading it did you panic and decide to construct the blue ribbon winner in the World’s Laziest Straw Man competition? “I’m sure you can direct me to a rape conviction based on a mean look, or a restraining order based on a stupid purchase. I’m positive that’s a thing you can do. I’m sure that’s very, VERY REAL and not just some nonsense you frantically came up with because the idea of accountability makes you nervous for some reason.” Carolyn Crain, via wweek.com: “Oregon’s restraining order is not in compliance with federal law. This makes for a very complicated mix of issues as the restraining order is so loose and can truly impact an accused individual on a ‘he said, she said’ basis with their rights to bear arms and their ability to gain employment. The entire system needs rethought so that true protections and real consequences are in place.”
“Domestic abuse by rich, influential, ‘important’ men is not rare. ”
Rudi Van Desarzio, via wweek.com: “Nearly 1 in 3 Oregon women are victims of domestic violence, says this story. What’s the rate for men? Because if national rates hold true here, that number is identical or higher for Oregon men. “To be sure, I think 1 in 3 is B.S. on both counts. It counts a variety of behaviors that most people would not consider ‘abuse.’ Leftist activists are forever engaging in this sort of concept creep. Stretching the meaning of words in order to generate more outrage, until the original meaning is lost. An unwanted look is now ‘rape,’ disapproving of your spouse’s spending habits is now ‘abuse,’ that sort of thing.”
Deborah L Lop, via Facebook: Oregon lawmakers: Please read all, especially the article at the end which shows the extremely critical need for legislative change yesterday.” LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: mzusman@wweek.com
Dr. Know BY MART Y SMITH
Do all states have as many fuck-up officials as Oregon? Every week a new report appears about some public employee lying, stealing, cheating, etc. Why aren’t these people investigated beforehand? Is Oregon just pathetically poorly run? —Proud Out-of-State Transplant
As Jesus said at the Last Supper: Eat me. Seriously, Plant—if you don’t like the clam dip at this party (to which I don’t think you were even invited) by all means feel free to seek out sunnier climes—God knows there’s plenty more where you came from. If I seem a little testy, perhaps it’s because I’m originally from Illinois, where four of our last seven governors have actually gone to prison. By this standard, Oregon’s meager influencepeddling scandals barely move the needle—wake me when it’s 17 counts of extortion. But you don’t need to invoke Illinois’ Libyalike stewardship of the public trust to make Oregon look good. By many measures, we’re one of the least corrupt states in the nation—and I’ve got the numbers to prove it! Normally, I would do these calculations myself, but in this case, the wonks over at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com have already done them, avoiding the chance I’d fall asleep on the keyboard and report that Wisconsin had 4
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
13333333333333333 cases of land fraud in 2011. Measuring by federal corruption convictions per capita, Oregon was the least corrupt state in the union as of 2015. I won’t deny we might’ve moved up a tick in the rankings since then. Even so, there’s no way we’re challenging perennial corruption powerhouses like the aforementioned Illinois (No. 6) or Mississippi (No. 2). Of course, counting convictions gets you only so far—perhaps some states’ institutions are so rampant with vice that no one is even bothering to file charges. To find out, Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics surveyed journalists across the country on their impressions of local lawlessness (my questionnaire must have gotten lost in the mail). The result? Oregon was rated fifth-least corrupt, behind only Massachusetts, Vermont, Michigan and North Dakota. So, unless you want to take on Edmond J. Safra, can it. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Presented By
Neighbors Accuse City Planners of Breaking State Law
Your Brain On LOL’s
A neighborhood association has accused Portland City Hall of violating state law and city code by appointing too many real estate professionals to the Planning and Sustainability Commission. The letter, sent Nov. 17 on behalf of the Multnomah Neighborhood Association in Southwest Portland, says five of the 11 commissioners work “principally” in real estate—two more than state law allows. “We are requesting that the city act immediately to correct the membership violations by replacing at least three of the five members…with citizens who can broadly represent the interests of the general public,” writes the neighborhood association’s land-use consultant, Eben Fodor. City officials say three of the five members—two lawyers and an architect—don’t count as real estate professionals for purposes of the commission.
By JoAnn Schinderle
I WOULDN’T CONSIDER MYSELF A “POTHEAD”. I am however, a dope person and comic who enjoys a solid belly laugh. Last week, I smoked different strains of bud from Gnome Grown, went to comedy shows, and rated the evenings ‘giggle factor’ based on how much my distinguishably loud laugh was enhanced while on the legal marijuana. Alien Rift (22.55% THC 2.36% Total Terp). This bud tastes like it popped
straight out of beautiful Sigourney Weaver’s abdomen; strong & soupy. Alien Rift took my on conversations about space & infinite universes, and questions like, “Where would you hide if aliens invaded earth?” (Behind the curtains, was the answer). I was on giggle cloud9 when I went to Mississippi Pizza for You’re Welcome comedy showcase. Alien Rift was the perfect strain to smoke for that show. The amusement of this bud carried me onto the stage and into a riff where I got the entire audience to eagerly sing the chorus of “My Heart Will Go On”. This strain has a high Terp percentage which is linked to serotonin! Serotonin is the chemical linked to sunshine juice for your brain! YAY! A real Internal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind type feeling. (Not sorry). Giggle Rating: Five Stars Comedy Show: You’re Welcome @ Mississippi Pizza - Wednesday’s 9:30pm the freshness of PNW mountain run-off water if it were flowing through Willy Wonka’s candyland; sweet and smooth. I once was told my aura is yellow & gold and to keep it shiny, I’m to surround myself by yellow & gold. The word ‘lemon’ stuck out as a third eye opening opportunity. However, the high from Oregon Lemon was appealingly subtle. It plastered a smile on my resting bitch face & felt like smooth jazz flowing through my veins. I got my laughs in at Al’s Den, Portland’s mini comedy club vibe. The show is only advertised to the hotel that sits above it, so the audience is a mixture of locals and tourists in barefeet & bathrobes. I was in such a good mood, I performed an almost Ted-Talk set I had written about sexual health. I think everyone left the show making a mental note to phone Planned Parenthood for a screening. Giggle Rating: Three Stars Comedy Show: Al’s Den @ The Annex - Friday & Saturday’s 10pm
Huckleberry (15.30% THC .90% Total Terp). This bud tasted like if bombpops
could be grinded up into sticky weed. It was very flavorful and really felt like you were sneaking a delicious summer treat. I had to smoke a lot of this to get to the level where I felt silly. I would suggest Huckleberry to anyone who is stepping out into the functioning world high on marijuana for the first time. I gleefully headed to Helium Comedy Club. It’s the place where anyone who is serious about being a comic flocks to. It’s the most professional playground in town, so I treated it as such and did not get high before my set. I did however get high immediately after my set & TBH, this weed made me a tinge judgy. An open mic-er had a bit about how he was upset Justin Timberlake would be back to perform the SuperBowl and I thought ‘honey, let me borrow you my JT Live in London DVD’s. Take note on his swag, you could use it.’ To which I started calling this strain ‘Huckleberry Judy.” Giggle Rating: Four Stars Comedy Show: Helium Comedy Club Open Mic - Tuesdays 8pm
Gnome Walker (22.58% THC 1.8% Total Terp). This bud tastes like a tiny
gnome built a gingerbread house inside a pipe and every time you smoke it he dances with joy. I smoked this weed to take the edge of my traditional pre-hosting show panic attack. I’ve been running Control Yourself comedy showcase for almost four years and it’s literally the closest thing I have to raising a child. Control Yourself is a perfect mix of local talent, nationally touring comics, and major drop in’s such as Portlandia’s own, Fred Armisen. The crowd is equal parts returning patrons and new audience members. Having Gnome Walker on the brain heightened my celebratory dance moves throughout an amazing show. Is that what parenting is like, getting high and dancing alone in a corner until you come down? Giggle Rating: Four Stars Comedy Show: Control Yourself: A Showcase of Funny - Sunday’s 8:30pm Mollala 719 Molalla Ave. Oregon City, OR 97045
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Beaver Creek 2005 Beavercreek Rd. Oregon City, OR 97045
ROSIE STRUVE
Oregon Lemon (22.78% THC .06% CBD 1.51% Total Terp). This bud tastes like
Unions Will Endorse in Senate Appointment
The competition to succeed state Sen. Richard Devlin (D-Tualatin) is one of the most complex, hotly contested and consequential metro-area legislative appointments in many years. One sign of how meaningful it is: Unions and trial lawyers are taking the unusual step of endorsing choices for a seat that’s appointed by county commissioners. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union and the Oregon Educational Association will join the
Oregon Trial Lawyers Association in making endorsements because they hope to tilt the balance of the Senate leftward. They’ll have plenty of people to choose from: Recently retired Multnomah County lobbyist Claudia Black entered the race Nov. 21, joining, among others, Lake Oswego School Board member Rob Wagner and former state Rep. Greg Macpherson (D-Lake Oswego).
BLACK
Appeals Court Rules for ODOT in Contentious Case
Score one for the Oregon Department of Transportation. On Nov. 15, the Oregon Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the agency, which in 2010 worked out an arrangement to sell drivers’ records to a private vendor for about $10 apiece, five times the price the agency charged for the information. Truckers and insurers, who were forced to pay an additional $15 million a year, sued ODOT, claiming the scheme was an illegal diversion of money dedicated to the state highway fund (“The Driving Records Racket,” WW, Dec. 13, 2013). The truckers and insurers won in Marion County Circuit Court, but ODOT won at the court of appeals. Greg Chaimov, who represents the truckers and insurers, says his clients are considering whether to appeal.
Give!Guide Puts on a Show
WW’s annual Give!Guide is live and accepting donations at giveguide.org. Giving has surpassed $539,000 from 3,163 donors. Check out Mic Capes on Nov. 22 at White Owl Social Club for a Give!Guide happy hour with raffle drawings and happyhour pricing.
LEAH NASH
NEWS
What You Need to Know This Week
TIMELINE
Deal or No Deal How Kitzhaber’s Ethics Commission Settlement Cratered. BY NIG E L JAQ U I SS
KITZHABER
njaquiss@wweek.com
Last week was supposed to mark the end of investigations into former Gov. John Kitzhaber. After federal and state investigations fizzled, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission staff reached a settlement agreement with Kitzhaber’s attorney. It was a great deal for the disgraced governor, who resigned in February 2015 as the spotlight increased on an influence-peddling scandal surrounding the consulting work of his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes. Kitzhaber would settle three allegations of conflicts of interest (and one of improperly obtaining frequent flyer miles) by agreeing to pay a $1,000 fine.
N ov. 1 5 , 8 : 49 a m :
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission releases its ag enda for its Nov. 17 meeting, including a proposed $1,000 fine to settle four ethics law violations.
But commissioners found a Facebook statement he released prior to their meeting less than contrite and were unsatisfied with his attorney’s responses to their questions. “I think it would hurt the commission long term by going with a small penalty,” Commissioner Dan Mason, a Hillsboro Republican, tells WW. “If you are small-town public official, and you see the former governor getting this settlement, do you really take the ethics laws seriously?” Here’s a timeline of key events.
Nov. 17, 9:00 am: The OGEC
kicked off a five-hour meeting. After handling such business as a settlement regarding the Beaver Slough Drainage District, the commission turned to Kitzhaber. The discussion did not go well. In fact, although many commissioners arrived expecting to vote for the settlement, it failed 7-1.
Nov. 15, 3:36 pm: Kitzhaber releases
a statement on Facebook. “I did not perceive a conflict of interest because I understood the work that Ms. Hayes was doing for various nonprofit organizations was not directed at trying to shape or influence state policy,” he wrote. “[But] I accept full responsibility for this violation and believe the proposed settlement to be a fair resolution of the case.”
Jan. 5, 2018, 9:00 am:
The OGEC is scheduled to reconsider a settlement with Kitzhaber and address alleged ethics violations by Hayes.
Nov. 20, 4:30 pm: “My last post appears to have been somewhat premature,” Kitzhaber wrote on Facebook. “The terms of the proposed settlement, which I accepted, were put forward by the professional staff of the Oregon Government Ethics Commission. I was therefore surprised by the reaction of the Commission.”
BACK AND FORTH
The Asian-American nonprofit is the latest organization roiled by #MeToo.
—Fourteen former employees and board members at the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, in a Nov. 5 letter demanding the immediate resignations of executive director Joseph Santos-Lyons, associate director Duncan Hwang, and all board members at the 21-year-old nonprofit, which lobbies on behalf of Asian-Americans and is increasingly active in social justice campaigns.
THE ODDS FOR STAYing in Portland are in Uber’s faVOR. Uber is increasingly unpopular at Portland City Hall. But it’s not going anywhere. The ride-hailing company didn’t win friends after revelations this spring that it had used a software called “Greyball” to evade city regulators in 2014, or when it tried earlier this year to undercut city rules with state legislation. But a city investigation of Uber found no new use of Greyball since 2014—meaning the company faces no fines or penalties. And as city officials begin their latest round of rulemaking for Uber and its competitor Lyft, WW has found little political will to kick the companies out of town or even restrain their growth. “I’d like to see them operate as a better corporate citizen,” says City Commissioner Nick Fish, a harsh critic of the company. Interviews with city commissioners’ offices show Uber has little to fear. Here’s what’s likely to happen, in descending order of probability. RACHEL MONAHAN.
Nearly certain:
New fines and penalties for breaking the rules. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman plans to return to the council in February with a response to the Greyball investigation. Saltzman’s office will recommend new, increased fines—and even permanent revocation of the company’s license to operate—if the company seeks to evade regulators through Greyball technology or other means in the future.
maybe:
Accusations at APANO “There have been over a dozen staff members who have been pushed out and traumatized by their experiences of rampant sexism, homophobia and transphobia at APANO.”
Kicking the Tires
“We want to assure our communities that APANO has, and will continue to thoroughly investigate allegations of misconduct, including gender and LGBTQ discrimination, and respond appropriately. To date, we have no evidence to suggest that there has been any unlawful discrimination or actions by current or former staff within the organizational practices of APANO.” —APANO board chairs Simon Tam and Raahi Reddy, in a Nov. 15 open letter to the Asian Pacific community. The controversy is among the latest turmoil to arise from the #MeToo movement, which has drawn attention to sexual harassment and abuse nationwide. NIGEL JAQUISS.
Increased insurance requirements. Commissioner Amanda Fritz is championing a measure to mandate that Uber and Lyft carry the same level of insurance as taxis. Taxis must carry half-million-dollar insurance policies; Uber and Lyft drivers don’t have to carry such insurance at times when they’re tooling around waiting for a fare.
Unlikely:
A cap on the number of cars operating in Portland. Fritz’s office says that’s improbable, at least in the upcoming round of reforms.
Not a chance:
An outright ban. London recently banned Uber. But no one at City Hall has yet suggested a ban here, and even Fritz, Uber’s avowed enemy, isn’t proposing one. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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NEWS
KIM HERBST
A Match Made in Heaven
“IT’S SORT OF LIKE THE POLITICAL GRIEVANCE INDUSTRY HAS IDENTIFIED JUDGE DAY’S CASE AS ONE THAT CAN HELP FINANCE AND PROMOTE THEIR INDUSTRY NATIONALLY.”
RECORDS SHOW BELEAGUERED JUDGE VANCE DAY HAS TURNED HIS REFUSAL TO MARRY SAME-SEX COUPLES INTO A CASH REGISTER FOR HIS ALLIES. BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
njaquiss@wweek.com
Marion County Circuit Judge Vance Day hasn’t let his troubles get him down. Instead, he’s using them to build a national platform. Day has achieved a lot of firsts. He’s the first judge that Oregon’s judicial fitness commission has recommended for removal from the bench in more than 35 years. He is the first judge ever to use Oregon’s decade-old law allowing embattled public officials to establish legal trust funds. And Day has raised far more with his fund—at least a half-million dollars—than other elected officials who have established such funds. Although Day’s ethical and legal troubles have been well-documented over the past two years, the details of how he’s used his defense fund to harness a political movement have not previously been reported. Day has turned his proposed expulsion from the bench into a cash cow—using his fund to hire big-name lawyers, rake in money from an enigmatic conservative foundation, and cozy up to permanently outraged rightwing culture warriors. “This case is a unicorn in judicial and legal terms,” says Rob Harris, a Hillsboro lawyer and former municipal court and pro tem judge. “But it’s expensive to defend yourself, and it sounds like maybe somebody came to Judge Day with a proposition.” Day declined to comment on the specifics of the cases against him or the details of his trust fund. “I can say that I am very grateful to all those who have stood with me during the last two years,” he said. “Hopefully, the process on how we handle political differences will all be the better for it.” In 2007, the Oregon Legislature passed a law allowing public officials to create a trust fund to defray the cost of legal bills related to their duties. Lawmakers wanted transparency instead of allowing donors to pay public officials’ legal expenses without disclosure. Few elected officials have established such trust funds in the past decade. Records show that Day, a former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party who was appointed to the bench in 2011, has raised and spent nearly $500,000 in his trust fund. (By comparison, the second-largest active 8
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
fund benefits Grant County Sheriff Glen Palmer, who was investigated for his support of the occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. It has raised less than $25,000.) Day’s filings with the Oregon Government Ethics Commission show he has raised most of his money from out-of-state donors lured by his culture-warrior cred. And he’s spending it outside Oregon, too—on some of the top conservative lawyers and fundraising consultants in the country. As in the Sweet Cakes by Melissa case, in which a Christian baker in Gresham named Aaron Klein earned martyrdom in conservative circles for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, Day has leveraged his plight nationally. “It’s sort of like the political grievance industry has identified Judge Day’s case as one that can help finance and promote their industry nationally,” Harris says. The first complaints about Day were bizarre. In 2012, he allegedly ran across a sports field to intimidate a referee at a community college soccer game in which is son was a player. But the allegations soon grew in severity. A January 2016 decision by the Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability found Day had abused his position of authority over a former Navy SEAL who appeared in his Veterans Treatment Court. Day allowed the SEAL, who was a convicted felon, to handle a gun during out-of-court leisure time the men spent together. Day also solicited donations for courtroom artwork from lawyers who appeared in front of him. And, he declined to marry same-sex couples. The commission voted unanimously to recommend that Day be removed from the bench. “Judge Day’s actions evidence a pattern of exploiting his judicial position to satisfy his personal desires,” the commission wrote in its Jan. 25, 2016, decision. “The behavior is frequent and extensive.” But Day’s fundraising website focuses on his refusal to marry same-sex couples. “One serious charge lies at the heart of the complaint against him,” says his website, DefendJudgeDay.com. “That his decision to excuse himself from performing same-sex marriages violated his duty as a judge.” (The judicial fitness commission said that’s misleading.)
The trust fund kicked into overdrive last spring to prepare to argue the judicial fitness commission decision in front of the Oregon Supreme Court. Only the high court can remove a judge from the bench. Highlights from the fund’s operations show how the national “political grievance industry” got involved: • Nearly a quarter of the money to pay Day’s bills came in the form of tax-deductible contributions funneled through an Indiana-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit called the James Madison Center for Free Speech. • Day’s trust fund also paid the lawyer who directs the Madison Center, James Bopp, nearly $40,000 in legal fees. • The $380,000 that Day’s trust fund raised from individuals (i.e., not from the Madison Center) came from just about every state in the country. And with all those national donations, the fund paid more than $216,000 to a conservative fundraising firm. In other words, Day spent more than half of individual contributors’ money on national consultants who move in the world of conservative politics. Bopp is an Indiana-based lawyer who’s represented the anti-abortion National Right to Life Committee for 35 years and was the architect of the Citizens United case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 unshackled corporate political spending. Portland public interest lawyer Dan Meek says it’s odd that donors are getting a tax deduction through the Madison Center, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, to help pay for Day’s defense, and that Bopp is playing a dual role. “It doesn’t look good,” Meek says, “but there’s probably nothing wrong with it legally.” Bopp says his roles in Day’s case are separate and entirely appropriate. “I was retained by Judge Day to brief the constitutional issues in the case,” Bopp says in an email. “In addition, Judge Day asked the Madison Center for support for the case because of the First Amendment constitutional issues involved, and they agreed. Neither is related to the other.” Day has paid large legal bills, but by far the biggest beneficiary of his case was his fundraising firm, Eberle Associates Inc. of Tysons Corner, Va. In an Oct. 13 filing, Day’s trust fund disclosed paying Eberle $216,563—56 percent of the money raised from individual donors. That’s about five times what Oregon political fundraisers charge campaigns. Randall Adams, trustee of Day’s fund, says that figure includes extensive “hard costs,” including printing, mailing, list acquisition and accounting. “The agency fee through September 2017 was $22,280, which amounts to 6.6 percent of the funds raised,” Adams says. Adams says Day’s trust fund is working as designed. “It is not the goal of the legal expense trust fund to politicize this case,” he says, “but rather to attract and assist those who support Judge Day.” The fact remains, however, that most of the individual donors’ money never made it to Day—it instead was funneled from conservative donors to conservative lawyers and consultants. For the past two years, Day has been sitting at home, collecting his $137,136 judge’s salary and awaiting a Supreme Court ruling on the judicial fitness commission’s recommendation. And in February, he’ll face trial on two felony charges in Marion County for allowing a felon—the former Navy SEAL—to handle a gun. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
NEWS
ODD MAN OUT: Jo Ann Hardesty, Loretta Smith, Andrea Valderrama and Spencer Raymond are all running for the City Council.
Three’s Company SHOULD A PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL SEAT BE RESERVED FOR A WOMAN OF COLOR? BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N
rmonahan@wweek.com
When a young man with a slim résumé entered the race for the Portland City Council last month, he was met with outrage from social justice advocates and local officials. His offense? Mostly his gender and his race: He’s white. Spencer Raymond, 30, a former Oregon Public Broadcasting newscaster who owns a West End taproom, entered a race in which three women of color were already vying for the seat held by retiring Commissioner Dan Saltzman. The backlash against Raymond was so intense it drew pity from one of the women he’s facing, NAACP of Portland president Jo Ann Hardesty. “I felt sorry for the gentleman from OPB, because people were being unduly harsh on him,” says Hardesty. “Anyone who wants to run should be able to run. I suspect there will be 10 to 12 people in the race by the filing deadline in March, and I suspect there will be white men and people of all colors, and I’m excited about it.” Not everybody is so welcoming. A range of left-wing Portlanders are pressuring straight white men to stay out of the campaign. In its hundred-year history, Portland has never elected a woman of color to the City Council. The prospect of that happening next year has created an unexpected dynamic in the campaign. It’s an inversion of the typical racial politics in homogenous Portland, which have tended to discourage candidates of color. (Portland remains one of America’s least diverse major cities: 78 percent of residents are white, according to 2016 U.S. Census figures.) Social justice activists and longtime political hacks are joining forces to argue the city would be better off if a white man isn’t elected again. “I really hope that we do elect one of the three very highly qualified women of color,” says Rich Rodgers, a onetime City Hall staffer for thenCommissioner Erik Sten. “It’s important to have a diversity of life experiences.” It doesn’t seem to have discouraged Raymond, who is still in the race. “Everyone running for City Council is doing so because they care about the future of Portland,” says Raymond. “I have tremendous respect for the other candidates, and I hope Portlanders consider everyone’s ideas before voting.” Yet at least three other white men have hesitated to enter the contest—two of them because they’re reluctant to run against women of color. Metro Councilor Sam Chase publicly weighed
a bid, then last month rejected a run, citing the need for diversity. “It’s been 25 years since there was a person of color on council,” Chase said. Trial lawyer Thane Tienson is still mulling a run, but says promoting a diverse City Council is a priority for him. Stuart Emmons, an architect who ran for the council in 2016, has raised more than $60,000 but hasn’t said if he’ll seek Saltzman’s seat and denied he’s staying away because of racial politics. Hardesty was the first candidate to enter the race, challenging Saltzman before he decided not to seek a sixth term. She’s been joined by Multnomah County Commissioner Loretta Smith, who is also black, and Andrea Valderrama, a Latina who is a senior policy adviser to Mayor Ted Wheeler. (A white woman, Felicia Williams, is also running, but has a lower profile.) Like Hardesty, Smith and Valderrama say no one should feel discouraged from entering. “Part of why I am running is that I believe a woman of color would bring a needed perspective and insight to the council,” says Smith. “At the same time, I believe no one should be discouraged from running.” But that’s not how it worked out for Raymond when he launched his candidacy Oct. 23. A bevy of progressives—from social justice activists who police Twitter to elected officials—jeered him on his own Facebook page. “You’re clearly going to need to answer the question of why you’ve decided—as a straight, able-bodied, middle-class white man—to run against three qualified women of color,” racialjustice activist Cameron Whitten wrote. “Spencer, do yourself a huge political favor and don’t run,” added Oregon state Rep. Diego Hernandez (D-Portland). Hernandez, who has endorsed Valderrama, tells WW white men have the right to run against women. “‘Is it politically strategic for you to run?’ is a different question,” Hernandez says. Raymond’s online shaming has gained him new fans. The right-wing extremist website Infowars ran a story that included screen shots of the abuse Raymond was taking on Facebook. Alt-right readers flooded Raymond’s Facebook page to support his candidacy. “It’s OK to be white,” multiple users wrote. Hardesty says she fears that white supremacists are now more vocal and will play a role in the primary. “[Raymond] was getting it from all sides— from the left and the right. That was unfortunate,” she says. “I almost sent him an email saying, ‘It’s OK. If you want to run, run.’” Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
THE
WELCOM
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R AV E N
PEARSO
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OUR ANNUAL POLL TO FIND THE CITY ’S BEST COMEDIANS.
new showcases run by Portland comedians (see below). Almost every night of the week, you can see great performers working in the corner of a bar, at a comedy club or at a downtown men’s boutique. When we first started Funniest Five in 2013, Portland comedy was growing into what it is today. Now, some of our previous winners have gone on to release comedy albums, found their own showcases and even perform on Conan.. So we decided to check in with all 20 of our former winners (starts on page 14). The comedians now coming into their own have little relationship to those who won our poll a half-decade ago. We don’t know if they can match the success of people like Amy Miller and Shane Torres, but they certainly have the talent. Let’s meet them.
TRICIA HIPPS
E
very year, we worry about our Funniest Five poll. This is the fifth installment of our annual survey, in which we ask local comedians and industry insiders to pick the city’s five funniest people. This year, more than 100 people voted, everyone from barbacks at comedy clubs to former winners who are now on TV. We used to fret we’d run out of talent. But now, we’re done worrying. As Funniest Five V proves, Portland has established itself as one of the nation’s great comedy scenes. The results of this year’s poll show a wide range of talent; they also show that our past concern about the frequency with which Portland comedians leave town for New York or LA isn’t something to worry about. It’s now clear that this outflux of comedians isn’t a liability, it’s one of our assets—Portland is where people can get their feet wet before going to bigger markets. If there’s a downside to Portland comedy, it’s the vastness. To guide you through the sprawl, we’ve put together a list of the best
GO: WW’s Funniest Five showcase, hosted by Adam Pasi, is at the Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., wweek.com. 7 pm Tuesday, Nov. 28. $10.
PORTRAITS BY HILARY SANDER ILLUSTRATIONS BY TRICIA HIPPS AND RAVEN PEARSON
FUNNIEST 5 NEW SHOWCASES Portland comedy has expanded at an exponential rate in the past few years. This year, in particular, brought dozens of new comedy showcases. It’s a lot to wade through, but it also means that you can see great comedy for very little money. To help you navigate the ever-expanding scene, we’ve again compiled a list of the five best new showcases. You’re Welcome Mississippi Pizza Pub, 3552 N Mississippi Ave., facebook. com/ywcomedyshow. 9:30 pm Wednesdays. Free. You’re Welcome is one of the most raucous weekly comedy nights in town, hosted by some of the most talented comedians. Adam Pasi is a previous Funniest Five winner, Marcus Coleman is on this year’s list (see page 19), and Shain Brenden will almost certainly be on a future one— a recent Brenden routine included a hilarious slam poem about life inside a McDonald’s drive-thru. And because there’s trivia beforehand at Mississippi Pizza, you’re almost guaranteed to get a few tipsy hecklers.
Lez Stand Up Siren Theater, 315 NW Davis St., sirentheater.com. See website for upcoming shows. $10. Lez Stand Up isn’t exactly new, but for its first years of existence, the lesbian- and queer-inclusive showcase appeared only at random intervals at different venues across the city. This year, Lez Stand Up finally found a home at the Siren Theater. It’s still doesn’t have a regular schedule, but now that it has a regular venue, you can count on seeing it a couple times a month. Lez Stand Up shows are about as feel-good as comedy gets, thanks to the bubbly energy of host Kirsten Kuppenbender and the cathartically aggro stage presence of Caitlin Weierhauser.
Sincerity Is Gross The Slide Inn, 2348 SE Ankeny St., facebook.com/sincerityisgross. 7:30 pm Sundays. Free. If half the battle of creating a good showcase is making your audience comfortable, then host James Barela does his job before his shows even start. In its first year of existence, Barela’s showcase has booked lineup after lineup of the city’s most dependably funny, craft-oriented comedians. One recent show was dominated by casually flawless sets from newcomers Corina Lucas and Jake Silberman. It’s not a showcase where comedians usually experiment with wacky new material, but that’s part of why it’s so reliably funny—it’s back-to-back sets of comedians performing their best material.
Standing Upright The Ape Theater, 126 NE Alberta St., facebook.com/ standinguprightattheape. 7:30 pm Wednesdays. $5. Dylan Jenkins, who placed in last year’s poll, teams with Neeraj Srinivasan for a showcase at the brand-new, comedian-run Ape Theater. The Ape is in the basement of the Alberta Rose Theatre, and feels like a secret clubhouse, complete with colorful string lights and paper cups for the keg of Lompoc in the lobby fridge. Both hosts have a footing in the local scene (Srinivasan is the newly appointed co-host of the long-running Minority Retort), which means a good local lineup.
The Collabo By the Collective, 205 SW Pine St. 8 pm Saturdays, restarting in 2018. One of two great showcases co-hosted by Marcus Coleman, the atmosphere of this show with Brandon Lyons is as carefully curated as the lineup. Held in the downtown boutique By the Collective, it’s set amid potted ferns, racks of clothing, and a mini-fridge stocked with Capri Sun. Coleman and Lyons expertly riff off each other and test out new material. More than any other showcase, it feels like a watering hole for Portland comedy—the most recent show included sets from Bri Pruett (see page 19) and Curtis Cook (page 18) and some of the funniest people in the city just hanging out in the audience. The showcase is taking a break, but look for dates in 2018.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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JoAnn Schinderle BY SHANNON GORMLEY sgormley@wweek.com
JoAnn Schinderle had no idea when it was coming. It was just a few months into her comedy career, and she was working behind the bar at Curious Comedy “making martinis and shit” as former Funniest Five winner Gabe Dinger hosted his standup showcase. Schinderle knew she was going to perform sometime during the show, but not when. So she poured beers and anxiously awaited the moment when she’d be called onstage. “He wouldn’t tell me when I was up because he wanted me to be on my toes,” says Schinderle. “He was like, ‘Your next comic coming to the stage has been making your food and drinks all night. Also, she’s knee-deep in her period.’” It was a key moment in Schinderle’s fledgling career. “I was so shocked and embarrassed, but leaned in to it and told a story I’ve never told before,” says Schinderle. “It helped me dive in.” Now that Schinderle is the one cultivating Portland comedy, her liberal use of period jokes seems like a power play. In one of her jokes about “free bleeding,” she insists that if women have to go to work while on their periods, workplaces should provide tampons or be cool about menstrual blood ending up on office chairs.
PHOTOS BY THOMAS TEAL
A lot has changed since we founded Funniest Five in 2013. So in honor of Funniest Five V, we decided to check in with all our previous winners with a questionnaire. Their answers are below, edited for space and clarity.
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Not long after Dinger abruptly called her up onto the stage, Schinderle decided to take charge. She started her own showcase, Control Yourself, which is now the second-longest-running showcase in the city behind Barbara Holm’s It’s Gonna Be Okay. For almost four years, Schinderle has booked, produced and hosted Control Yourself every Sunday at the Alberta Street Pub. She’s built Control Yourself into a place for Portland’s up-and-coming comedians to hone their craft as well as a stopping point for touring comedians. One recent show included hosts of other local showcases flexing their best jokes, and laid-back sets from nationally established comedians Shane Mauss and Brooke Van Poppelen. Schinderle hosts with infectious, hammy energy that still seems sincere, and tells jokes that feel colloquial even though they’re carefully crafted. She delivers one bit about a stranger telling her that her expression makes her look “extremely unapproachable” with the casual exasperation of a venting friend. But when she gets to the punch line, it’s full force: “Your expression makes you look like a cunt!—it’s OK, I can say that word. My best friend is one.” S he ’s ex t r emely a n i m at e d—her theatrical gestures are often half the joke, whether it’s implying doggy-style before revealing that she’s talking about bicycling (“ass up, hands down, stomach folded”) or flashing jazz hands at the backs of audience members leaving their seats while she’s introducing a comic. Her material is mostly lovable-slacker stories—trying to return wine-stained rugs to Target, ref lecting on whether you’d sleep with your date if you were sober, and wearing dark jeans instead of buying tampons. But instead of self-deprecating, Schinderle is commanding. “I love yelling,” as she words it. Her turbulent delivery is what makes her jokes so viscerally satisfying. She dips from casually mumbling absurdities (“Do you ever want to shave your whole body and start over?”) to aggressively proclaiming them (“I want the hair removed from my body, including my vagina, please help me.”) So on a Wednesday afternoon at Bare Bones Cafe on Southeast Belmont Street, it’s surprising to find her so reserved. Sitting at a corner table eating a bowl of
1. Adam Pasi Where are you now? Gresham. What’s your current comedy job? I have a very silly podcast called Chumba and Wumba with Alex Rios, I host a monthly show called Savages at Cider Riot (last Thursday), and I co-host two other shows with friends: You’re Welcome on Wednesdays at Mississippi Pizza and Dork Horses randomly at Fixin’ To. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? The birth of my son Palagi Aikae. What’s your biggest regret? I had my podcast producer rearrange the studio that I record in every
squash soup, she’s almost inconspicuous except for the fact that she’s wearing a Blazers jersey and an oversized Blazers snapback even though there’s no game (she just came from an audition, she explains). Schinderle is still highly expressive, and speaks with a residual Wisconsin accent punctuated by chuckles that are somewhere between ironically theatrical and a nervous giggle. But whenever she talks about her work, it’s with focus and intensity. “I felt pressure from the very beginning that if I was going to do something, it had to be done well because I was so new,” she says. It’s hard to imagine now that Control Yourself is such a mainstay, but Schinderle founded the showcase only a year after she moved to the city and performed her first standup set. In 2012, she moved to Portland from Minneapolis to curate and host art and fashion shows. But when she got here, she quickly found she needed another creative outlet. “I worked from home, I didn’t know anybody,” says Schinderle. “It just rained every day. I was losing my mind.” She decided that outlet should be standup comedy, partly because she had something to get off her chest. “Ultimately, it stemmed from wanting to write a tragedy novel,” says Schinderle. In college, Schinderle had her identity stolen by a man she had been in a relationship with for three years. He found out her Social Security number then wreaked havoc on her bank account that her credit score still hasn’t recovered from. “It’s a true Dateline story. He was engaged to like three different women after we broke up,” says Schinderle. “The whole scenario ruined ties with my family. It was really bad.” She was hoping to use the terrible situation as an opportunity to fulfi ll her lifelong dream of writing a novel that made Oprah’s Book Club. But Oprah ended her show before Schinderle got the chance to write her story. “You can’t just wake up and be a writer if Oprah’s gone,” says Schinderle. So she decided to use her story to check off another item on her bucket list—performing standup comedy. Her desire to tell her identity theft story was the impetus for her standup career, but she quickly noticed that audiences respond better to jokes about everyday mishaps like passive-aggressive roommates and bad dating experi-
Monday, and he did a horrible job. Now it is absolutely shitty in there, and he won’t change it back because he has an attitude problem. And since I have nowhere else to record, I have that discomfort to look forward to on a weekly basis. 2. Caitlin Weierhauser Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? Lez Stand Up, hosting the I, Anonymous live show at Curious Comedy Theater, teaching Comedy Academy at Helium, running my Harry Potter fan theory podcast, Room of Requirement 237, also co-hosting XRAY in the Morning every Friday with Jason Traeger. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five?
ences. “Standup is like you’re telling your friends a story at a bar,” Schinderle says. “You just have to cut the fat out of it.” She started going to open mics on a regular basis and performing at comedy festivals in Austin and San Francisco. But it was a bartending job at Old Town Brewing that led to Control Yourself. The ow ners of the A lber ta Street Pub were regulars during Schinderle’s shift and, one day, went to one of her standup sets. Shortly after that, they asked her to run a comedy showcase in their newly renovated space. “ S ome w ou ld a r g ue t h at y ou shouldn’t run a showcase until you have a little more under your belt,” says Schinderle, before coyly adding, “unless you’re good.” Along with the fact that she had been tirelessly sharpening her own skills as a comedian, her previous career was as an event planner. Her early success was due to a combination of “being comfortable onstage because I was a theater kid and, when the opportunity arose, being a businesswoman,” says Schinderle. “I set my own terms.” Now, it doesn’t exactly seem like a unique position. The city’s rapidly growing demand for comedy has led to a boom in comedian-run shows in the past few years. There are now dozens of regular comedy showcases. But when Control Yourself first started, there were only a few. That worked to Schinderle’s advantage. The epicenter of the comedy scene was a lot easier to pinpoint—it was clear who was at the bottom of the ladder, but that also meant it was clear how to get to the top. “There was a backroom of the Brody Theater, and that’s where like Ian Karmel and Sean Jordan and Shane Torres [would hang out],” says Schinderle. “You never walked through those curtains unless you were good enough.” From the very beginning, Schinderle had a vision for Control Yourself as a jumping-off point not just for individual comics but for the scene as a whole. “Outof-town comics, I wanted to make sure my show was a destination spot for them, too,” she says. “And it is.” As Portland continues to gain a national reputation as a comedy city due to
I won Portland’s Funniest Person Competition at Helium Comedy Club, and took first in the WW readers poll for Best Comedian and appeared in [Portland-made web series] The Benefits of Gusbandry. What’s your biggest regret? Interviewing for WW the day after Trump got elected. 3. Dylan Jenkins Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? I co-host a weekly standup show called Standing Upright. What’s your biggest regret? Two months ago, after a good set, I hit up a Redbox on my way home. The residual overconfidence in my system from the aforementioned show resulted in me renting three Blu-rays!
JOANN PERFORMING AT THE ALBERTA STREET PUB
Bridgetown Comedy Festival and our steady stream of comedians to New York and LA, Control Yourself provides a vital, year-round connection between an expanding local scene and its increasingly national ambitions. When Portlandia’s Fred Armisen was in town this past September, he asked Schinderle if he could perform on her show. Schinderle’s influence on Portland comedy appears in strange places, the least of which is behind-the-scenes period jokes. “There’s this ongoing joke in the community that other female comedians sync up with me, which I think is awesome,” she says. “Now men are talking about it. I’ll get text messages from dudes that have questions about their girlfriends.” Sometimes, the jokes even make it to the stage. Schinderle’s Yolks & Jokes co-host, Jake Silberman, has a bit he performs about the fact that until recently, he thought women used one tampon for their entire period. “That’s the level we’re starting at,” says Schinderle. But she seems humored by the idea of educating male comedians one text about bodily functions at a time: “I’m like, ‘Yes, I will guide you through this.’” So if people have a problem with how liberally she uses periods as a premise for jokes, Schinderle says they can fuck off. “I have actual evidence that it’s starting a conversation,” she says.
In my heart of hearts, I new damn well that I was only going to watch half of one before falling asleep. That night, I flew too close to the sun, and I paid the price. After three days of procrastination, I returned the Blu-rays, resulting in late fees twice the amount I was paid for the show. 4. Don Frost Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? Random shows and open mics, mostly taking time to put the pen to the paper. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? I learned how to wake up before noon. What’s your biggest regret? Not sleeping past noon anymore.
5. Amanda Arnold Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? I’m regularly working at Helium Comedy Club and Harvey’s. My biggest project that I am working on is co-producing a comedy festival called the Undertow Comedy Festival. It’s the only comedy festival on the Oregon Coast. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Becoming a regular at Helium Comedy Club, getting funding to do this festival, and getting bumped up to do an hour on road gigs in the middle of nowhere. What’s your biggest regret? If I give myself time to think about regrets and live in the past, I’m not moving forward.
CONT. on page 16 Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Milan Patel
3636 n mississippi ave | open daily 11.21-12.28 BY MATTHEW SINGER msinger@wweek.com
As a comic, Milan Patel admits he’s still in development. One thing he’s already figured out, though, is that being a dick doesn’t really suit him. “I used to be very aggressive onstage and get really mad at people,” he says from a table at Muchas Gracias on Northeast Weidler Street. “I don’t know how I haven’t gotten the shit beaten out of me.” Watching him now, either in front of a crowd or between mouthfuls of taquitos, it’s hard to imagine Patel ever fit the “angry young man” profile. Frankly, it doesn’t seem like he’d have the energy for it. Onstage, as in conversation, his demeanor is best described as “between naps,” and his bits about Jamba Juice and the length of his butt crack hardly suggest there’s a cauldron of rage simmering beneath his deadpan exterior. But until about a year ago, if an audience had the temerity not to laugh at his jokes—or, worse, talk over them—well, God help their souls. “There’s a point at which you’re just laying into somebody and it’s not funny anymore,” Patel says. “I became the asshole.” So scratch “in-your-face jerk” off the list of
1. Susan Rice Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? I do the occasional clubs. I do more fundraising and corporate work now. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? I was offered to be part of a book about women in comedy called The Girl in the Show by Anna Fields. It is a look at women from Lucille Ball and Gilda Radner to today’s funny feminist. What’s your biggest regret? Life is too short for regrets. I take it one laugh at a time.
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
potential comedic personae. As for the kind of comedian Patel actually wants to be, that’s still a work in progress. At age 26, he’s outgrown the suffocating-in-irony anti-comedy he gravitated toward as a teenager, but hasn’t yet lived long enough to feel comfortable assuming the role of wizened truth-teller. For now, he’s sticking with what he knows—which, as a 20-something stuck in that peculiar spot between college and real adulthood, is basically nothing. But at least he knows that that, and that’s something to build on. With his slackerish affect and bedheaded look, Patel comes across like the shy, quiet kid who finally got someone to ask what he thinks, and he’s using the opportunity to express all the strange, mundane thoughts he used to keep to himself. Obviously, it’s worked out well for him so far. Because truth be told, that’s pretty much exactly who he is. Growing up in Vancouver, Wash., Patel indeed mostly kept his head down. In high school, he was less into comedy than “comedy shit”—he liked funny things, but never thought of standup as something he’d ever want to try. Nevertheless, his senior year, he signed up to do a five-minute rou-
2. Philip Schallberger Where are you now? Ketchikan, Alaska. [Editor’s note: That’s not true, and we cannot verify anything else that follows.] What’s your current comedy job? Currently working at the Black Salmon Tavern as a line cook/bus boy. Tourist season just ended, so business has gotten a lot slower. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Leaving comedy for good. What’s your biggest regret? That I didn’t get work on a fishing boat. Some guys can rake in $8,000 a month. I mean, I don’t mind my current job: Hours are steady, and I’m able to save up a little here and there. Just got a 32-inch TV for my shed and an extra heater for the pipes (they
burst last month, turned the bed to ice, no fun!). In a few years, I’ll have enough saved where I can head down to Bellingham and look for a wife. But with a fishing gig, it would be matter of months, not years! Oh well. 3. Jason Traeger Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? Working on an art, standup comedy, musical, multimedia project called Traeger Method. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? That I’m still having a great time doing comedy. What’s your biggest regret? No regrets.
tine at a talent show. He decided to perform the show as a character who was really nervous, “because I was really nervous,” he says. He mostly stuck to cringingly unfunny anti-humor: “Here’s a funny story that happened to me. I was at a vending machine, and I pressed the button for Coke, but Pepsi came out. So that was funny.” “I think I just wanted attention,” he says. “Everyone wants attention, no matter how shy they are.” Somehow, it got the audience to laugh, and the reaction pushed him to keep going. While attending the University of Washington, Patel played open mics around Seattle, testing out different approaches to telling jokes, but generally trying to entertain his friends before anyone else. After graduation, he spent another year up north finding his feet as a performer before moving back in with his mother in Vancouver for what he thought would be a brief stopover before continuing on to Los Angeles. Three years later, he’s still there. “I was just living here at home, and it was just easy. And I was getting stage time,” he says. “Portland is like anywhere—if you stick around long enough and people see you, things get better and better.” In the years since coming back to town, Patel has gradually moved away from the metacomedy and absurd nonjokes he started with and has begun working on material drawn from his real life. It’s been a challenge, mostly because he suspects his life at this point isn’t really worth drawing from. But his awareness of that fact—that he might not have anything to say, but there’s a mic in his hand, so he’s going to say something—is what makes his current stuff click. “I’m pretty stupid,” he’ll often confess onstage. But that won’t stop him from disputing the perceived vastness of space, or vehemently defending his uncircumcised penis, or advising his even-younger self that it’s best if you “don’t ever tell anyone how you feel about anything.” What he doesn’t talk about is anything related to being Indian. When he steps onstage, Patel says he can sense what the audience wants to hear from him—the customary joke about his name or family. He skips that. “They’ll be like, ‘Say it! Tell us what you are!’ They want it so bad, I can tell, and I just avoid it completely,” he says. “They want you to address it. But if you don’t address it and you just move on and say, ‘I’m all these other things, too,’ people forget by the middle of your set. Then, they’re just listening to a comedian.”
4. Alex Falcone Where are you now? Portland. What’s your current comedy job? I’ve been lucky enough to open for some great comics as part of their theater shows: Matt Braunger, Demetri Martin and Sebastian Maniscalco. My weekly show Earthquake Hurricane is celebrating our third year, and I published my first novel, a young adult romance about a girl who falls in love with a mummy. Publishers Weekly called it “unfortunate.” What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? I just listed my three proudest accomplishments for question 3. Too late to change it. What’s your biggest regret? On May 9, 2016, I ate an entire tube of cookie dough for breakfast.
5. Gabe Dinger Where are you now? Sherman Oaks, Calif. What’s your current comedy job? I’ve been auditioning a lot. I was in a Big Freedia video (“Make It Jingle”), and I’ve been going on the road opening for Ron Funches. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Moving down to LA. I had been in Portland for all of my life. In 33 years, this is the longest I have ever been away, and leaving was scary. What’s your biggest regret? I’m not a very impulsive person so most of my regrets are petty. Like, I should have had more than a quinoa bowl for lunch, or why did I think Batman v Superman would be better a second time?
CONT. on page 18
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Tim Ledwith BY M ATT H E W KO R F H AGE
mkorfhage@wweek.com
Every now and then, Tim Ledwith gets what he calls “the skitch.” “It’s like a sketchy itch,” says the 34-year-old comic. “I would go down 82nd, I’d pick up some crack, or let somebody get into my car.” Even dressed in a simple sweatshirt and jeans, the Boston-area native is the kind of guy strangers on the street are convinced they recognize from prison. He seems to wear chaos like an undershirt. Though he’s physically small—a stocky 5-foot-6 Irish Italian with soft features and innocent, wounded eyes—Ledwith’s presence onstage is near-intimidating in its unpredictability. After jostling against the bar stool on the stage at a recent Helium open mic, Ledwith touched it gently. “I’m not going to fuck this stool!” he yelled suddenly, scaring a woman into moving her seat away from the stage. He then confessed to the audience that his idea of sex was formed by the 3D Pipes screen saver on Windows 95. He moved his arm, snakelike, to demonstrate. Ledwith moved to Portland in 2009, happy to escape the violence of his hometown. “No one in Portland ever stabbed me for having eyes,” he says. “That’s how Boston is. You’re scared people are out to harm you. You don’t look in their eyes.”
1. Sean Jordan Where are you now? Los Angeles. What’s your current comedy job? I’ve been going on the road a lot since moving. Compared to Portland, the sets down here are few and far between. I need to go on the road so I can stay sharp. I’ve been on a writing team for a pilot, which was one of the best experiences of my life. I’m also lucky enough to be a regular co-host on a podcast called All Fantasy Everything. Ian Karmel started it and we do it every week.
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He came to humor, he says, almost as a reflex—forced to come to grips far too early with the darkness in the world as a survivor of childhood sexual trauma. “I make people laugh in jail. I make people laugh in shitty jobs, in drug deals—but that’s a necessity,” he says, not only as a means of warding off violence but of dealing with trauma. “I was trying to make sense of it all by the time I was 10.” Ledwith describes the life that followed his abuse as “criminal,” saying he did so many drugs they “damaged my brain.” He was sent to juvenile hall at the age of 13 for the premeditated attempted murder of a bully. “I was having problems with this kid. He was like 6 feet tall, I was tiny,” he says. “Yeah, I brought a ratchet to school and split his head open. I guess it was premeditated, but I wasn’t trying to kill him.” In juvie, he was constantly terrified, carrying a tattered Howard Zinn book around as a totem—and when he returned to the outside world, he fell into a life as a teenage sex worker. Once, he says, he unsuccessfully tried to extort money from a Plymouth city official who’d found him in an AOL chatroom. “The town I grew up in is so fucked,” he says. “They probably had the same number of child molesters as any town. But they all happened to be in the leadership of the town.” Laughter was a survival mechanism, enough of a constant that his friends pushed him toward comedy for years before he finally took the stage six years ago in Portland. In the beginning, his material dove headlong into the darkest parts of his past. “I had a cathartic process when I first started comedy,” he says. “I was able to unleash that. Nowadays, it’s done. But I don’t have qualms about it.” Though he’s less likely now to write material about the deepest traumas, he has no problem talking about his past. “Wherever you live,” he says in one bit, “there are so many little things on the ground that look like pieces of crystal meth. But they never are! So get off your knees, America! Get back to work!” Nonetheless, he prefers to separate the humor he uses as a defense mechanism from the comedy he makes as an art form. “If you have nuance, if you find beauty in life, and you think it’s really strange and absurd, and you also carry the burden of trauma, you can represent yourself in a more balanced way,” he says. “I think of myself as a reckless optimist,” he adds. “Somehow, I’ve always remained an optimist without being given a lot of reason to.” Ledwith says his significant other, comedian Marina Math, once told him, “You’re not a glass-half-full kind of person. You’re a glass-is-full-of-poison-and-you’repretending-it’s-not-full-of-poison kind of person.”
What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Just moving. I was terrified to leave Portland. I’m still scared every single day. Every day that I stay on it down here I’m proud of myself. What’s your biggest regret? I don’t have any regrets. I have the best friends in the world, and whatever I did to get me to this point, I’m thrilled about. 2. Curtis Cook Where are you now? Los Angeles. What’s your current comedy job? In addition to performing, I’m currently a writer for The Jim Jefferies Show on
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Comedy Central. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Getting the fuck out of Portland. What’s your biggest regret? About three months ago, my coworker Lucas and his wife, Aubrey, welcomed their firstborn son into the world. They named their child Arlo because, as you might have guessed, they met at a record shop and are the whitest couple imaginable. About a week after his son’s arrival, I told Lucas that “the name ‘Arlo’ makes it sound like your son is gonna grow up to be one of those gross dudes who plays acoustic guitar at house parties.” Lucas and I haven’t spoken since. And
Becky Braunstein BY B ROOKE GEERY
@brookegeery
Becky Braunstein’s career as a comedian started with life-threatening news. While living outside Anchorage, Alaska, she was diagnosed with metastatic thyroid cancer and needed to move somewhere with better access to medical care. She ended up in Portland home to world-renowned Oregon Health & Science University. “Coming from middle-of-nowhere Alaska, this to me is a big city,” she says. “People park their cars on the streets and ride bikes places. We don’t have that in Alaska.” Braunstein had wanted to move out of Alaska for some time. Her medical needs were just the push it took get her moving. “I mostly moved here to seek success in showbiz,” she says. It was a bold move, as Braunstein is quick to point out in her material: “Back home, people are always talking about moving out of Alaska,” she says. “Nine times out of 10, they come back just drenched in failure.”
though I believe what I said to be true, I do sort of regret having insulted his freshly birthed baby boy. 3. Steven Wilber Wilber did not respond press time, but according to his social media, he still lives in Portland and frequently performs at Helium. 4. Christian Ricketts Ricketts could not be reached by press time because, according to friend and colleague Tim Ledwith, he was on a silent meditation retreat. He recently relocated to San Diego.
5. Nariko Ott Where are you now? Brooklyn. What’s your current comedy job? I’ve starting writing for online publications like Hard Drive magazine and also for larger future projects for myself. I’ve also started a podcast with my buddy Dan Weber called What’s More Metal? What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Getting to open for Kurt Braunohler on his Comedy Central special Trust Me. What’s your biggest regret? Staying Facebook friends with Martin Cizmar.
Braunstein isn’t going back any time soon. Over a plate of chicken fingers in a corner booth at the Overlook lounge, she says the only thing she hasn’t adjusted to three years later is the heat. “Anything over 65 is too hot for me,” she says, wearing a T-shirt in November in silent protest. “Everyone says you don’t need AC here, but they’re heat deniers.” Since moving here in 2014, she’s scored a coveted spot as a regular at Helium, and is now running her own showcase, Becky With the Good Jokes. Lately, she’s been spending time on the road and performing at comedy festivals. But after she first moved to the city to undergo aggressive cancer treatment, she credits her positivity and ability to laugh at just about anything with helping her survive. By the time her cancer went into remission in 2015, Braunstein was determined to get her comedy career off the ground. Her treatment had included throat surgery that could have taken her away her ability to speak. After nearly losing her voice, she decided she was going to use it to the best of her ability. She started by diligently signing up for the open mic at Helium. At first, she only got onstage once a month. But she began performing more and more, until Helium offered her a regular gig early this year. In stark contrast to the stereotypical self-deprecating comedian, it’s Braunstein’s sunny worldview that makes her humor so infectious. “I’m not a controversial figure, I don’t think,” says Braunstein. “I just want to have a good time, and I want everyone else to have a good time, too.” This is something deeply earnest about Braunstein’s stage presence. She often preaches the joys of her long-term relationship—dating new people, she says in one of her jokes, is like having to “complete an important project with the new person at work. There usually comes a point where you’re like, ‘Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but it would be better if I just do this myself.’” After a pilot run at Bridgetown Comedy, Becky With the Good Jokes launched last September. It’s one of the most ambitious showcases in the city: Along with a lineup of regulars in the Portland standup scene, Braunstein books musicians and, last month, screened a short film she made in Alaska. Already, the showcase has hosted Jenny Conlee of the Decemberists and a surprise drop-in set from Matt Braunger, perhaps the most famous comedian ever to come out of Portland and one of Bridgetown’s founders. Braunstein says that moving from a town so remote it doesn’t even have law enforcement to a bona fide city still feels like an adjustment, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. “It is a lot, but I love it. It’s what I assume having kids is like, but like six kids,” says Braunstein. “I mean, three years ago, I couldn’t get arrested. Now I’ve got too much to do.”
Marcus Coleman BY MA RTIN CIZMA R
Marcus Coleman didn’t set out to tell dad jokes. When he started performing standup in 2015, Coleman was writing about cops. As a St. Louis native, he knew all too well about the police brutality exposed in the wake of the Michael Brown killing. “When I started, there were a lot of cop jokes—a lot of cop jokes,” Coleman says. “When Ferguson happened, that was not far from where I’m from. I watched that shit unfold on my timeline before it was news.” Coleman’s material has evolved a lot since. He’s now more apt to talk about being kink-shamed for wanting to wear toe socks in bed and his inability to relate to kids with Odell Beckham’s haircut. The burly and bespectacled 25-year-old with a laid-back drawl still stands out in a city where a huge proportion of the material involves bad roommates, drunken regrets and the nuances of dating apps. Coleman doesn’t use dating apps—or emojis. “I’m not that whimsical, and I’m not going to fake it for you,” he says in his set. Coming from a self-described “simple man from Missouri,” Coleman’s material draws so much from his childhood that a lot of people don’t realize he moved to Beaverton in high school. “Most people don’t know that I’ve spent any time here because I don’t talk about it onstage,” he says. “Just went to school here and then got a job—it’s really boring. Smoked a lot of weed, went to Eugene sometimes. That’s kinda it. So I just mine from the first 17 years of my life. I tell a story about the dude I saw got stabbed at a basketball game—shit like that.” A lot of that interesting stuff involved his dad, also named Marcus. “I didn’t plan on being the dad comic,” he says. “But there’s a lot to mine there.” Marcus the elder is a Marine, bodybuilder, rock climber, stripper and truck driver. “A dirtbag renaissance man,” as Marcus Coleman puts it. “He does a lot of weird shit. It all seemed normal to me, and I only found out it’s weird looking back on it,” he says. That included Dad teaching his son to swipe his hand across the peephole of a door before looking in, just in case the person on the other side has an ice pick and is planning to stab you. Marcus Coleman also got his son into comedy. They started with Martin Lawrence’s 1st Amendment Standup, then Bill Burr, and then Patrice O’Neal. “I put on a little comedy show with my stepbrothers and my little sister when I was a kid. We would play ComicView. It was just us roasting each other,” he says. “It was dope.” Coleman roasts his dad now, which is appreciated. “He’ll remind me of stuff on purpose,” Coleman says. “I was writing a joke about him recently, and he texted me, ‘Hey, do you remember this thing?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s
Tenuta, and she told me to stop worrying. What’s your biggest regret? Getting bullied into this questionnaire! 1. Amy Miller Where are you now? Los Angeles. What’s your current comedy job? Mostly touring, submitting for various TV and late-night shows, writing, swimming in my pool, and running a show at the Hollywood Improv. I also have a podcast now called Who’s Your God? We interview comedians about their religious and spiritual beliefs. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Leaving Portland and chasing this dream shit. Also I had dinner with Judy
mcizmar@wweek.com
2. Shane Torres Where are you now? Brooklyn. What’s your current comedy job? I tour pretty frequently. I am on the road every weekend for the rest of the year except for one. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? That I am moving forward in my career and that I have worked hard to get here. I have been very lucky too. Hoping to move to the next level. There are many things to be proud of, though.
What’s your biggest regret? There are many. 3. Nathan Brannon Brannon did not respond for comment but now lives in LA. Last year, he released his second comedy album on Kill Rock Stars, Because, which was recorded at the Alberta Street Pub. He also runs a podcast called Hamster Village about interracial relationships. 4. Kristine Levine Where are you now? Tucson, Ariz. What’s your current comedy job? Still performing, still doing standup showcase Critical Comedy. Right now,
already in there—but thanks for helping out.’ He’s passing the videos around—anything that mentions him. I have a joke about him being attractive, and he likes showing that one around.” Coleman will have to keep telling jokes about his dad, because he’s “a very boring dude.” “I just chill,” he says. “I like watching movies and shit. I’m very, very boring. I just kick it with my friends and eat junk food, drink.” Coleman is part of a new generation of comics—the scene WW covered in the first Funniest Five has moved on. Coleman never met fellow Beavertonian Ian Karmel or the other pillars of that scene. But some things about the scene remain the same. Coleman and his friends hang out at a house on Southeast Clinton Street. Coleman scrapes by with a warehouse job counting water jugs and spends his free time hanging with his friends, working on his craft and exploring the mysteries of Portland, such as the majesty of the Reel M Inn jojo. Marcus’ affection for the jojo—which is not a potato wedge, and which Coleman eats often after a long night, along with late-night slices of Hammy’s pizza— has caused some tension between him and his dad. “I got annoyed. I was like, ‘Why the fuck do y’all call ’em ‘jojos’?’ So I looked that shit up,” he says. “My dad was giving me shit for it. My dad’s from Mississippi, and he raised me in St. Louis, so he’s like city-country. He was getting on me for saying ‘jojos.’ ‘So you’re like a Portland guy now? You call ’em ‘jojos’?’ And I said, ‘No, Dad, they’re not the same thing.’ I learned this! It’s a different thing!”
I’m working as on-air talent on the classic rock station down here. The Unbookables (a documentary I’m in) was just picked up by Comedy Dynamics. I have a pilot still being shopped and a new album coming out and another to be recorded in spring next year. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Probably making my pilot, Life Is Ass. What’s your biggest regret? For whatever reason, I just couldn’t cut it anymore in Portland. I couldn’t afford to live there, I couldn’t deal with the nouveau riche culture. I wish I could have handled it. I wish I could have stayed.
5. Bri Pruett Where are you now? Glendale, Calif. What’s your current comedy job? Freelance writing, doing the odd set in East LA’s thriving alt-comedy scene, and making appearances on podcasts, TEDx, etc. The only difference is, I now write pilots and work on pitches in lieu of playing comedy clubs. What’s your biggest accomplishment since placing in Funniest Five? Tie between appearing on Comedy Central and mounting my solo show. What’s your biggest regret? Agreeing to host election night 2016 at Mississippi Studios.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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STREET
(Left); “I’d be a white square so I could jump out at people and be like, ‘Squared ya!’ ” (Middle): “I’d be a squid, ’cause not many people know they go out into the world, procreate and then die.” (Right): “I’d just be a circle.”
“I’d be a pink flamingo!”
PHOTOS BY SAM GEHRKE @samgehrkephotography
“Probably a zebra.”
IF YOU WERE A MASCOT WHAT WOULD YOU BE? OUR FAVORITE LOOKS THIS WEEK.
“I’d be a bear wearing a really tight, really small T-shirt.”
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
“I don’t follow sports, really. If I could just make one up I’d be a sloth.”
“I’d be a Vandal. That’s Idaho’s mascot and I always thought it was super weird to have a Vandal as a mascot... like what even is a Vandal? The mascot is just a bearded guy with an axe.”
(Left): “I’d be a koala, and I’ve got a little koala right here!” (Right): “I’d be a penguin so I’d have an excuse to constantly slide around on my belly.”
HEY, I’M SHOPPIN’ HERE!
HUNTER MURPHY
STYLE
SHANA TABOR’S IGWT IS ONE OF PORTLAND FASHION’S CONSPICUOUS NEW YORK CONNECTIONS. BY WA L K E R M AC M UR D O wmacmurdo@wweek.com
A month into this column, and one city keeps aggressive avant-garde while maintaining a femipopping up among the boutique owners, shop- nine silhouette. pers and #influencers in Portland’s fashion scene. So why make running two successful bouIt isn’t anywhere in California; it’s New York City. tiques in New York that much harder by moving Whether it’s a boutique owner who visits cross country? In Tabor’s case, it has to do with twice a year to buy new collections in the fashion the Portland lifestyle, that being that we have district’s warehouses or a streetwear guy who space for things like yards and trees. excitedly tells me it’s the best city on the planet, “You guys have everything a New Yorker New York and Portland’s fashion scenes have complains we don’t have,” says Tabor. “Even if a connection that’s deeper than the traditional you can rent something in New York for the same love-hate relationship with the Golden State. amount of money, you can rent for here, it’s going What’s the deal? I asked brand-new New York to involve way more space, a back yard.” emigre Shana Tabor, owner of North Williams’ Tabor purchased the Williams property in jewelry and women’s wear boutique In God We 2009 after her brother and mother relocated Trust—or, IGWT—about the connection. here, but remained in New York after the brand But first, IGWT, which has sat quietly next to took off in the late 2000s. She pulled the trigger Tasty and Sons on North Williams since opening on moving this year after having twins three years in May. So far, the store has received little fan- ago, the inconveniences of New York becoming fare. too obnoxious with young children. This is strange, as IGWT has been a mainstay “In New York, you have to jump over hurdles of Brooklyn’s fashion scene for over 10 years, with to do something easy and simple,” says Tabor. a shop in Williamsburg since 2005, and a second “Living there is really difficult, and people that in Greenpoint. Gothamist called IGWT one of survive that sort of thrive on it. But when you New York’s “12 Best Local Clothing Labels” and stop thriving on it, it’s time to leave and find the Refinery 29 called it “One of New York City’s place you can thrive.” fashion institutions.” Yet, the adjustment isn’t one out of Portland Stroll into the boutique and you’ll see why. being the Next Big Thing (again). Though IGWT’s Tabor and her team design Brooklyn stores will remain and manufacture all of open, Tabor believes that IGWT’s jewelry and cloththe future of her stores may ing in their Brooklyn-based lie in Portland’s ethos. workshop. Tabor ’s jew“On a personal level, elry designs are minimal, I’m just really excited to yet carry themselves with a make this move and to see strong “fuck you” attitude. A this business happen, and brass collar ($120) necklace be a part of it,” says Tabor. TOP 5 looks like a choker, while “I don’t want this to be perbrass heart pendants ($40) ceived as some New York from Tabor’s Sweet Nothings store that’s jumping on line come hand-engraved the bandwagon and openwith messages like “Eat A ing up a store in Portland. Dick.” For me, it’s way more perIGWT’s clothes carry a sonal. 1. Mall goth/nu metal similar aesthetic. A dark blue 2. Platform sneakers & creepers wool overcoat ($405) is clasGO: In God We Trust, sically elegant, but graced 3. Bleach-blonde buzz cuts 3714 N Williams Ave., with exposed seams and 971-302-7653, Open 4. Workwear/Dickies/Carhartt imposing pockets. A black, 11-7 Monday through Saturday, 11-6 Sunday. knee-length faux-shearling 5. Men’s crop tops “blob” coat ($480) channels
LATE ‘90s TRENDS ON THE VERGE OF A COMEBACK
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 8, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
G R A N T K R AT Z E R
THE BUMP
CAROLINA SMOKED NIKE HONCHO PHIL KNIGHT IS CELEBRATING HIS 80TH BIRTHDAY WITH A BIG COLLEGE BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT IN PORTLAND. LET’S PREVIEW THE MATCHUPS.
When you’re a billionaire shoe magnate, you can celebrate your birthday however you want. Nike honcho Phil Knight could celebrate in beautiful Bermuda, where his company keeps its money for tax purposes, or in Vietnam, where people work in brutal conditions for very little pay to make his shoes. Instead, Knight has chosen to clap his hands, smile and summon the finest athletic young men to perform for him here in Portland. Well, most of the fi nest—Knight can only compel the attendance of the young men who perform while wearing his shoes so that they may obtain a free
education, making vast sums of money for other old white guys like him in the process. Somehow, though, several of the nation’s elite Nike college basketball programs successfully excused themselves from the tournament, forcing Knight to fill out the bracket with some locals. In the absence of top-ranked Nike programs like Michigan State, Arizona and Villanova, one Portland team gets to play the defending national champion while the other gets the current No. 1. Here’s how we expect that to go. MARTIN CIZMAR.
NORTH CAROLINA VS. THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND
DUKE VS. PORTLAND STATE COACH Portland State: Barret Peery, previously
an assistant coach of the mighty Santa Clara Broncos, who made the Sweet 16 seven times and the Final Four once.
Portland State: The Vikings’ most recent postseason appearance was a 2014 berth in the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament, where they lost in the first round to San Diego.
LAST SEASON
Duke : Mike Krzyzewski, who played
point guard for the Army Black Knights, where he later began his coaching career. NOTABLE ALUMNI Duke: Christian Laettner, Danny Ferry and Grant Hill. Celtics point guard Kyrie Irving attended but did not graduate, possibly because he was unable to pass science classes since he believes the Earth is flat. Portland State: The legendary Freeman
Williams, whose career highlights include being named NBA Player of the Month in 1980 while with the San Diego Clippers. PROGRAM RESUME Duke : 16 Final Four appearances, five national championships.
Duke: Lost to South Carolina in the round
of 32, bringing joy to a troubled nation.
COACH Pilots: Two-time NBA All-Star Terry Por-
ter. The Blazers legend took over last year and, uh, presided over a record-losing streak. Tar Heels: Roy Williams, who was on the Tar Heels’ JV squad and never sniffed the NBA.
NOTABLE ALUMNI:
Portland State : Had a mediocre record,
lost to North Dakota in the Big Sky Conference Tournament. STANDOUT PLAYERS D uke : Dirtbag and cheap-shot artist
Grayson Allen, who everybody hates for his disgustingly unsportsmanlike hits on opposing players. Also, future superstar Marvin Bagley III. Portland State: Deontae North has been
playing well.
PREDICTED SCORE DUKE WINS A SQUEAKER, 183-7.
Tar Heels: Michael Jordan, some other
guys. Pilots: UP’s women’s soccer team is very
good. PROGRAM RESUME Tar Heels: 20 Final Four appearances, including six championships. Pilots: Last won a postseason tournament game in 1957.
LAST SEASON Tar Heels: National champions. Pilots: 11-22, including a team-record 14-game losing streak.
STANDOUT PLAYERS Tar Heels: Joel Berry II, who will hopefully be back at full strength after breaking his hand when he punched a door because he lost a game of NBA 2K to a teammate. Pilots: Great Great Brit Josh “Swiggy P” McSwiggan, who recently ranked as the eighth best player in his whole country. Don’t cut out Swiggy P if the Quaffle is passed to him near the goal hoops, avoiding Haversacking fouls.
PREDICTED SCORE UNC GRINDS IT OUT FOR A GUTSY WIN, 120-12. GO: The Phil Knight Invitational is at the Moda Center and Memorial Coliseum, November 23-26. Tickets $30-$645. Full details at pkinvitational.com. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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STARTERS
B I T E - S I Z E D P O R T L A N D C U LT U R E N E W S
VOODOO DOUGHNUTS
Cocktails Food Carts Gifts
Wet Wizard Hot Sauce Client Joy Swarm Portland Green Mountain Energy Gem + Point The Ninjabot Sweetbody Laboratories Imperfect Produce Portland Cider Cura Vida Copper Seisuke Knives Muri Vodka Abby Creek Vineyards Vinn Distillery
Dec.14 5-9 PM District East 2305 SE 9th
VOODUMB DOUGHNUTS: Charles Manson died Nov. 19 at the way-too-old age of 83. To commemorate the moment, Voodoo Doughnut decided to memorialize Manson the same way it’s paid tribute to cultural icons like Malcolm Young of AC/DC and Portland music legend Fred Cole—by making him into a doughnut. Voodoo tweeted a photo of a doughnut bearing Manson’s image, with his signature crazy eyes, an “x” replacing the swastika he had tattooed on his forehead and the words “Charles Manson 1934-2017.” The pastry-based glorification of a man who ordered the murders of seven people did not go over well on the internet. After taking down the initial tweet, Voodoo reposted the doughnut with a clarification: “Not celebrating. Villains die, too.” After that failed to quell the outcry, they deleted it for good. Voodoo declined to comment.
POOL TABLES SPORTS VIDEOPOKER GREAT FOOD OOK YOUR OUR PARTY ARTY HERE ERE!! BOOK 529 SW 4th Avenue (503) 228-7605 • Facebook.com/RialtoPool Open Daily 11am to 2:30am 24
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
THOMAS TEAL
SHAKE UP: The parent company of one of Portland’s most famous and stylish dispensaries, Serra, was just hit with a $550,000 lawsuit alleging wrongful termination and retaliation for whistleblowing. The allegations stem from the handling of a kilogram of “jar shake” cannabis that had not been tracked by the state’s system, as required by OLCC regulations. According to the suit, the shake was sprinkled into tested and labeled bags of tracked cannabis, and the weights were “written in by hand.” The two former employees say they were unlawfully fired after reporting their supervisor for packaging untracked cannabis for sale. GET WELL: Portland-based musician Scott McCaughey, frontman for cult-favorite Pacific Northwest acts the Minus 5 and Young Fresh Fellows and longtime touring member of R.E.M., suffered a stroke on Nov. 16. According to a Facebook post from his wife, Mary Winzig, the stroke occurred during McCaughey’s current West Coast run with singer-songwriter Alejandro Escovedo. Though he’s in stable condition, a GoFundMe campaign set up to assist with his medical bills described the stroke as “major.” Among the many projects he currently contributes to, McCaughey is a member of Filthy Friends, the Portland supergroup featuring Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck. In a statement, Buck called McCaughey “one of the unsung heroes of rock n roll.” STOOPID BURGER
OPENED/CLOSED: Stoopid Burger’s awesomely overloaded burgers have moved out of a cart on North Vancouver and into the Ocean food mall on Northeast 24th Avenue and Glisan Street. In March, the cart emerged as our favorite old-school burger spot in the city in a massive taste-off of 64 burger joints. >> Lompoc Brewing’s Hedge House on Southeast Division Street will be closing after 14 years. The other Lompoc locations are not in danger. >> Migration Brewing, a hangout brewpub in Kerns, is opening a massive 20,000-square-foot production facility and brewpub in Gresham next summer. >> After an eight-year run, North Portland’s tiny and well-loved Miho Izakaya is closing up shop on November 28.
11/22
TORI AMOS
DRINKSGIVING IN OLD TOWN
W E D N E S D AY
On her 15th album, Native Invader Invader, the flame-haired, piano-straddling songwriter takes aim at the degradation of the environment with her signature mix of mysticism and indignation. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-2484335, portland5.com/arleneschnitzer-concert-hall. 8 pm. $39.50-$79.50. All ages.
It’s the biggest bar night of the year. It’s Old Town. And 25 bars in sodden Old Town are having a big-ass street party devoted solely to the fact that it’s the biggest bar night of the year. What could go wrong—or right—except literally everything? Regrets last forever. Dirty, 35 NW 3rd Ave., and 24 other bars. Bar close is 2:30 am.
11/23
PROSTGIVING
T H U R S D AY
MOGWAI
11/24
F R I D AY
This is Portland’s greatest Thanksgiving tradition: For the ninth year, Prost will serve an utterly free dinner of nearly 100 pounds of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. TOMMY WISEAU Donations are encouraged, but only to charity. Beer will be served. Prost, 4237 N Mississippi Ave., 503-954-2674, prostportland.com. 6 pm. Free.
This year’s Every Country’s Sun is being heralded as a brilliant return to form for the Glaswegian post-rock luminaries, with subtle electronics, interstitial ambiance and a few straightforward rockers between those massive guitargasms fans love so much. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971230-0033, roselandpdx.com. 8 pm. $22. All ages.
WINE IN THE VALLEY
Get Busy
This year, as every year, the entire winery crop of the Willamette Valley opens its doors to you, the eager drinkers of wine. Over 150 wineries will offer music, wine discounts and maybe even free samples. Check out willamettewines.com for the specific details. Through Sunday.
WHERE WE’LL BE EATING 100 POUNDS OF TURKEY AND THEN LAUGHING IT OFF THIS WEEK.
N OV. 2 2-2 8
MOZZY
There’s no glamor in the world of Sacramento rapper Mozzy. His gritty authenticity has earned him a diehard following, and though his career is young, his catalog is already intimidating. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE 39th Ave., 503-2337100, hawthornetheatre.com. 8 pm. $18 advance, $23 day of show. All ages.
11/25
S AT U R D AY
PORTLAND CELLO PROJECT’S TRIBUTE TO OK COMPUTER The Portland Cello Project has tackled Radiohead before, but for the 20th anniversary of OK Computer, they’re doing it big, with a full band and an expanded orchestral section that should make it sound even more grand. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St. #110. 8 pm. $20. All ages. Also on Nov. 24.
FÊTE DU MACARON Pix owner Cheryl Wakerhauser has a new book out telling you how to make macarons, but for the lazy, she’ll be making an impossible rainbow of 30 different macaron flavors—and if you agree to stomp a cupcake as part of the celebration, you get a macaron for free. Because fuck cupcakes, amiright? Pix Patisserie, 2225 E Burnside St., 971271-7166, pixpatisserie.com.
S U N D AY
11/26
THE ROOM WITH TOMMY WISEAU
GIRLS GONE MILD
Holy shit—Tommy Wiseau is going to be in Portland mere days before the release of The Room comedy biopic starring James Franco as Wiseau. There’ll be a Q&A with Wiseau after a screening of his baffling “black comedy.” Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., cinema21.com. 8 pm. $10.
A standup showcase might seem like an ambitious way to start your Sunday morning, but Kirsten Kuppenbender’s new showcase is worth it. Along with mimosas, there’ll be comedy from Kuppenbender, Jason Traeger and the delightful Laura Anne Whitley. Siren Theater, 315 NW Davis St., sirentheater.com. Noon. $15.
11/27
M O N D AY
ANIMALS AS LEADERS Watching Animals As Leaders hurtle through their technically astounding music is like watching three superstar athletes. Using prog-rock, jazz and complex “djent” metal as springboards, the instrumental trio churn out head-spinning compositions that somehow sound like pop. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503-225-0047, crystalballroompdx.com. 7 pm. $25. All ages.
GROTTO FESTIVAL OF CHRISTMAS LIGHTS Pretty lights. So pretty. And they look like aminals. The Grotto, 8840 NE Skidmore St, thegrotto.org. 5-9:30 pm nightly through Dec. 30. $6-$11. (children under 3 free.)
T U E S D AY
11/28
BILL MURRAY
FUNNIEST 5 SHOWCASE
To quote the RZA, “Damn, Bill Murray.” The patron saint of hangdog louches is coming to town with cellist Jan Vogler for a night of poetry, prose and apparently a West Side Story medley. Hopefully, he’ll crash a house party afterward. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335, portland5.com/arlene-schnitzerconcert-hall. 7:30 pm. $50 and up. All ages. See feature, page 31.
The funniest people in Portland, as voted by their peers, are all performing in one showcase. Unfortunately, this year’s second place winner, Milan Patel, can’t make it, but the good news is last year’s winner, Adam Pasi, will host. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., wweek.com. 7 pm. $10. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK DRANK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
THURSDAY, NOV. 23 Prostgiving
This is Portland’s greatest Thanksgiving tradition: For the ninth year, Prost will serve an utterly free dinner of nearly 100 pounds of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. Donations are encouraged, but only to charity. Dinner starts at 6 pm. Beer will be served. Prost, 4237 N Mississippi Ave., 503-954-2674, prostportland. com. 6 pm.
FRIDAY, NOV. 24 Wine in the Valley
Every year, the entire winery crop of the Willamette Valley opens its doors to you, the eager drinkers of wine. This year, over 150 wineries will offer music, wine discounts and maybe even free samples. Check out willamettewines.com for the specific details. Through Sunday. willamettewines.com.
Fête du Macaron
VIETNAMESE SEAFOOD & HOT POT Happy Hour 3:30-5:30pm EvErydAy All Beers & Appetizers $1 Off
4229 SE 82nd Ave #3 • 503.841.5610
Pix owner Cheryl Wakerhauser has a new book out telling you how to make macarons; but for the lazy, she’ll be making an impossible rainbow of 30 different macaron flavors—and if you agree to stomp a cupcake as part of the celebration, you get a macaron for free. Because, fuck cupcakes, amiright? Pix Patisserie, 2225 E Burnside St, 971-271-7166, pixpatisserie. com. 2 pm-midnight.
HOT PLATES Where to eat this week.
1.
Rue
1005 SE Ankeny St., 503-2313748, ruepdx.com. Rue now has a pig roast every damn Tuesday—and a new wine director, Andy Young of St. Reginald Parish, pushing one of the best natural wine lists in town. $$-$$$.
2.
Revelry
210 SE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 971-339-3693., relayrestaurantgroup.com. Tuesday is a good day for dining, it turns out. Revelry has installed a $5 fried chicken and Rainier deal on hip hop nights every week. $-$$$.
3.
Shandong
3724 NE Broadway St., 503287-0331, shandongportland.com. As winter rolls in, sometimes only one thing will do: a bowl of Shandong’s impossibly long gwai wer noodles, plus maybe ma po tofu. $.
4.
Poke Mon
1485 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-894-9743, pokemonpdx.com. Through the end of November, you can and should get Earl Ninsom’s collaboration ahi laab bowl with tuna, shiitakes and salmon roe. $.
5.
Beeswing
4318 NE Cully Blvd., 503-477-7318, beeswingpdx.com. Marissa Lorette’s baked goods are the standouts at Cully brunch spot Beeswing, which branched out to dinner this month. $.
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Obscured by Clouds (CULMINATION) For IPA aficionados, fresh is best, and getting a fresh-off-the-line can of a brewery’s latest hoppy offering has become the equivalent of finding a perfectly cellared bottle. For the christening of its new canning line, Culmination jumped on the fresh-hype wagon and did a very limited run of its New England-style hazy double IPA, Obscured by Clouds. The Kerns brewery has been making this beer for a while, and it’s one of the better IPAs in town. With help from the citrusy flavor of Amarillo hops and the passionfruit notes of Galaxy hops, this beer is a far cry from the standard over-the-top bitter, malt-forward double-IPA profile, and it dangerously drinks more like a glass of freshly squeezed tropical juice. It’s something that even the biggest IPA hater could get behind. Unfortunately, the cans sold out immediately, but if you hurry, you can still find it on draft at Culmination’s tap room. Recommended. SHANNON ARMOUR.
Art of Sparkling 2014 Vintage Brut (ARGYLE) Thanksgiving is the biggest weekend of the year in the Willamette Valley, where small operations not usually open to the public crack their doors to red-toothed revellers. There’s always a lot to see in the Valley—the new Day Wines tasting room and L’Angolo Estate should be at the top of your list—but I’m a bubbles guy, so I always make a stop at Argyle. Depending on how your budget is looking, there’s a pretty great souvenir on offer there. For the second time, Oregon’s preeminent sparkler-maker has teamed up with students from the Pacific Northwest College of Art to design labels for its vintage brut, which is made in the French champagne method. The result is a clean, bright drop with a diamond-sharp edge that cuts then soothes. The set of three bottles runs $100 at Argyle and would make a great gift. Or, you know, drink them yourself, like I did. Recommended. MARTIN CIZMAR.
Clock Keeper Table Farmhouse (RUSE)
To make their Clock Keeper table farmhouse, the first thing Ruse brewers Devin Benware and Shaun Kalis did was drive out to a barley farm in Madras. At the Mecca Grade Estate Malthouse—one of the only craft malthouses in America— they picked up four bags of rustic, slightly grassy Pelton malt that’s an expression of the land on which it was grown. The beer was fermented and barreled, with a wild Brett yeast called Stargazer that Ruse tamed and keeps in Imperial labs in Portland, then bottle conditioned with a breezy champagne yeast. Five months later, Clock Keeper is a round, complex Brett beer that’s one of my favorite uses of Mecca Grade malt so far: Best drunk a bit warm to appreciate its full flavor, it’s free from the needling yeast notes that nettle many farmhouses, and refreshingly light without being thin. And at 3.5-percent ABV, you can drink it all day. Slap it on the table for your family on Thursday—it’s a great food beer—or down it with six other Ruse brews at the Black Friday tap takeover at Division Street bar Beermongers on November 24. Recommended. MATTHEW KORFHAGE.
ABBY GORDON
REVIEW
Fubonn
An International Marketplace. Food from Japan, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, America and MORE!
READY TO PIE: Crown is a good, new downtown utility spot.
Slice and Ice
CROWN IS THE UTILITY PIZZA AND COCKTAIL SPOT DOWNTOWN NEEDED. BY M A RT I N C I Z M A R
ONE STOP SHOPPING
Groceries · Housewares · Gifts · Clothing · Jewelry · Dining · And MORE mcizmar@wweek.com
Hotel restaurants are a funny thing. A couple of years ago, Doug Adams’ spectacular run at it Imperial earned it our Restaurant of the Year nod, and made us think maybe hotel restaurants could be the next great wave in Portland food. Hotels have plenty of money to invest in star chefs and opulent decor. While hotel eateries were traditionally rather conservative, it seemed like a new generation was willing to be more daring. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. We’ve spent this month hitting four new downtown hotel restaurants. The best of the bunch, Jackrabbit, comes from a San Francisco celebuchef. One of the others we reviewed, Omerta, has already closed after just three months in business. Which brings us back to Imperial—or, rather, to the space next to Imperial, which opened as a breakfast spot called Portland Penny Diner, before legendary local chef Vitaly Paley transitioned the space to a casual pizza and cocktail spot, Crown. After three visits, I’m a fan of Crown. Partly this is just because it’s exactly what downtown’s main drag Broadway needs: a slice spot that’s open late and has great cocktails. And partly its that Crown makes some very good junk food, which it counters with some respectable salads. There’s nothing here that’s much of a surprise, but Crown is also not trying to be anything it can’t. The main reason to go is the slices, from open to close. They’re wide wedges a little thicker and cheesier than a classic New York slice, but with a crust that has a nice snap. The only issue we had was the timing—when you order a slice, you want it pretty much immediately, and we waited in our seats for about 10 minutes after ordering. Whether this is common practice or they decided to make us fresh pies rather than reheat the ones they had on the racks, I can’t say. You can get a veggie with a side salad for $8 to $9, a classic lunch option that was needed in this area.
The second reason to go is the hulking yardlong party pies, called Al Metro, which will serve about 10. The classic cheese, pepperoni or Margherita is just $45, which is a late-night bargain if you’ve spent a long night with a group of friends at Bailey’s or Mary’s Club. Upgrading to a combo is $58, which is less of a bargain, but still a lot cheaper than feeding a big group elsewhere. I’d rather get the cheese pie and add on a salad (the $9 Greek is recommended, a shredded version with a nice punch from the sliced pepperoncini) and an order of the chicken bites ($9), which are battered in a seasoned mixture of buttermilk and flour, and served with ranch, pickles and Imperial hot sauce. Be warned, though, that you’re probably going to want something off the cocktail list. Imperial not-so-secretly remains one of the best bars downtown, and they’ve brought the same polish to the rotating drink menu here. I was most impressed with the Swipe Right ($10) a tequila drink balanced by peach and sour cranberry. After my first visit, I would have recommended the warm Banana Toddy ($8), which was gooey with banana and rum, but on the second visit it was made with way too much lemon, turning into a bizarre cacophony of sweet and sour. Also be warned that the whole round pies can get a little soggy in the middle thanks to all that cheese. Our marinara-less magic mushroom ($16 small, $22 large) was bathed in bechemel, and ended up tough to eat without a fork. A pepperoni pie had the same problem. But the next time I’m at Crown, I won’t be getting a whole pie. The slices are where it’s at—on a paper plate, so you can eat them while waiting for a Lyft home after a nice night out downtown or seated at the bar with a nightcap.
2850 S.E. 82nd Ave. · Portland OR 97266 · 9AM—8PM seven days a week
503-517-8877 · www.fubonn.com FOLLOW US @fubonnpdx
GO: Crown, 410 SW Broadway, 503-228-7224, imperialpdx.com/the-crown. MondayWednesday 11:30-1 am, Thursday and Friday 11:30-2:30 am, Saturday 3 pm-2:30 am, Sunday 3 pm-1 am. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
MUSIC = 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/ submit events and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: msinger@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 22 Worth, Moorea Masa and the Mood, Fox and Bones
[SOUL-FOLK] Christopher Worth likes to call his music “Bohemian blueshop,” and reading those words probably just triggered your brain to remind you that Everlast exists. Apologies for that. Luckily, the Portland-based ex-busker who goes by “Worth” isn’t busting rhymes over acoustic guitars. Pardon Me, his third album whose release he’s celebrating tonight, is really more of a soulful folk record, with slowly paced songs that give his gospel-tinged voice plenty of room to emote. It’s perhaps a bit too smooth for a guy who used to sing on the streets, but Worth’s earnestness makes it work. MATTHEW SINGER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-231-9663, dougfirlounge.com. 8 pm. $15 advance, $20 day of show. 21+.
Give!Guide Happy Hour: Mic Capes
[NON-PROFIT PARTY] Every Wednesday through mid-December, you can support Portland nonprofits while enjoying both cheap drinks and some of the city’s best emerging musical talent. This week, heavy-spitting St. Johns rapper Mic Capes comes through with tracks from his new EP, Sheesh. White Owl Social Club, 1305 SE 8th Ave, 503-236-9672, whiteowlsocialclub.com. 5 pm. Free. 21+. See the Thanksgiving Eve decision tree on this page for more Wednesday events.
THURSDAY, NOV. 23 Baio, Teen Daze
[ARISTOCRATIC ROCK] Don’t worry— this is not a listing for a Scott Baio musical project. Rather, it’s another Baio you might recognize. You may know Chris Baio from his bass-playing with New York indie-rock stars Vampire Weekend. This is his solo project, which debuted in 2015 with the release of his album The Names. He’s touring now on his sophomore effort, Man of the World, an album that includes the familiar, catchy rhythms and riffs of his main gig, but also incorporates distorted synths that make the music stand on its own. SETH SHALER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St, 503-231-9663. 9 pm. $14 advance, $16 day of show. 21+.
Mogwai, Xander Harris
[POST ROCK PIONEERS] See Get Busy, page 25. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave, 971-230-0033. 8 pm. $22. All ages.
FRIDAY, NOV. 24 The Pack A.D.
[GARAGE BLUES] In the past, it was hard to listen to the Pack A.D. without instantly comparing them to the White Stripes. But after the release of the band’s seventh album, Dollhouse, the highly underrated duo of singer-guitarist Becky Black and drummer Maya Miller deserve to stand on their own. Straying from the frenzied drums and gritty vocals of their previous albums, Dollhouse mostly takes a darker, bluesier turn, especially on songs like “Because of You,” where Black breaks your heart as she sultrily croons, “When someone like you comes around/It dissolves and everything falls out of my hands.” SHANNON ARMOUR. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-2319663. 9 pm. $12. 21+.
Mozzy, OMB Peezy
[STREET RAP] See Get Busy, page 25. Hawthorne Theatre, 1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd., 503-233-7100. 8 pm. $18 advance, $23 day of show. All ages.
Pre-Turkey Turn-Up A THANKSGIVING EVE DECISION TREE.
King Black Acid, Ezza Rose, Rob Wynia
[FILM ROCK] The term “cinematic” gets applied to just about any piece of music that relies on copious amounts of reverb and wandering arrangements. But big-screen ambition is too deeply ingrained in the DNA of Daniel Riddle’s King Black Acid project for the term to be register as a pejorative. On Super Beautiful Magic, Riddle creates a lush fantasia of slow-burning psychedelia that makes good use of the studio wizardry he developed while providing music for films and television. It’s the sound of a brilliant mind being completely unloaded onto the proverbial tape, yielding a gorgeous record that’s crammed with ideas without being suffocating. Tonight’s show benefits the Oregon Food Bank. PETE COTTELL. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 8 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY, NOV. 25 Black Pistol Fire, Cobi
[BLOOZ BROS] With the Black Keys headlining sports arenas, small-time surrogates have inevitably stepped in to capitalize of the success of their polished, populist stomp. Austin’s Black Pistol Fire specialize in slick and sultry bar-blues that’s tailor made for Cadillac commercials aimed at “authentic Americans.” While the duo deserves zero points for originality on this year’s Deadbeat Graffiti, their amalgamation of White Stripesinspired guitar heroics and bootyshaking backbeats is executed flawlessly and without an ounce of irony. PETE COTTELL. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-2319663. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
Tony Furtado, Jeffrey Martin
[FOLK MASTER] Jeffrey Martin’s latest effort, One Go Around, is the sound of a songwriter at the peak of his craft putting on x-ray specs and needling the world around him. Like the cover photo, which obscures much of Martin’s face in shadow except for his weary, all-knowing eyes, the album itself carries the weight of experience. You may have thought the world didn’t need another harmonica-and-guitar political ballad, but “What We’re Marching Toward” pulls off the rare feat of being both timeless and immediate. The final verse ends with a couplet that sums up Trump’s America better than anything else you’ll hear this year: “If the truth can be beaten and tied to a chair and made to say whatever we want/Then the words that we serve are nothing but ours/And our God is not God after all.” BLAKE HICKMAN. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503288-3895. 8 pm. $15 advance, $18 day of show. 21+.
BY MATTHEW S IN GER
ARE YOU TRYING TO AVOID RUNNING INTO PEOPLE FROM YOUR OLD HIGH SCHOOL? Nah, Bro, I’m Actively Trying to Relive High School!
[TUVAN INDUSTRIAL] Enrique Ugalde is one of Portland’s most unique artists—you’d be hard-pressed to find a performer quite like him anywhere, in fact. As Soriah, he blends Tuvan throat singing with heavy, industrialinspired droning and an aesthetic
CONT. on page 30
Like the Fucking Plague Depends on Who I’m Running Into
WEIRD, BUT OK. WHO DID YOU HANG OUT WITH?
ARE YOU SECRETLY HOPING TO RECONNECT WITH YOUR CRUSH?
The Hippies
Testify
That dance floor rendezvous playing out in your head definitely isn’t happening, but at least you’ll get to twerk your feelings away tonight before eating them tomorrow. Holocene. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
HOW HIPPIE ARE WE TALKING? Followed Spearhead on Tour One Summer
The Goths
Tony Ozier’s long-running funk jam truly puts the “funk” back into “jam,” but it still smells slightly of Dr. Bronner’s. Dante’s. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
Lit Candles Every Year on Ian Curtis’ Death Day
A depressive dance party for everyone who gets jealous of turkeys around this time of year, with post-punk jams from DJs Astareth and Grey Deth. Tonic Lounge. 10 pm. Free. 21+.
Shafty
Ever dreamed of seeing Phish play a basement party? Here’s the next best thing! And once that edible kicks in, you’ll hardly know the difference. Goodfoot Lounge. 10 pm. $10. 21+.
Bethlehem Steel
There’s a chance you’ll recognize someone here, but this Brooklyn band’s fuzzy indie rock is loud enough that you won’t have to talk to them. The Know. 8:20 pm. $8. 21+.
He’ll be there, and he’s totally putting the Chainsmokers on the jukebox. You know what to do. 500 SE 8th Ave.
Wrote Poems About Birds on Livejournal
Tori Amos
No, I’m Just Waiting for My Family to Go to Bed So I Can Sneak in Through the Back Door Without Being Bothered
Yamhill Pub
Sometimes you wanna go where nobody knows your name, and nobody wants to know. If that’s the case, then welcome home.
ARE YOU HOPING TO LAUGH SMUGLY AT EVERY SHITTY PERSON FROM YOUR SCHOOL PUKING IN THE STREET WHILE SECRETLY STILL FEELING SAD THAT THEY NEVER ACCEPTED YOU?
She saved your life in high school, and there’s no reason to believe she can’t do it again. The Schnitz. 8 pm. $39.50$79.50. All ages.
Drinksgiving in Old Town
Whoever Had the Best Drugs
They’re all gonna be here, so post up with a camping chair and a bucket of popcorn and enjoy the show.
WHAT KIND OF DRUGS? Homemade DMT
Flying Lotus
Sure
The Slammer
Death Throes
Followed Phish on Tour, but Could Only Afford to Tailgate
ARE YOU STILL TRYING TO HEAR LIVE MUSIC, THOUGH?
ARE YOU SECRETLY HOPING YOU GET DRUNK ENOUGH TO FINALLY PUNCH CHAD FARKUS IN THE FACE?
HOW DARK IS YOUR SOUL?
Dookie Jam
SUNDAY, NOV. 26 Soriah
msinger@wweek.com
Sure, maybe you’ve seen him before. But have you ever seen him...in 3D? Roseland Theater. 8:30 pm. $28.50 general admission, $40 reserved balcony. 21+. See preview listing, page 33.
Cocaine
1984: New Wave Night
Moonshine
It’s back, baby, and so is Kajagoogoo! Just be prepared to explain to Mom why you’re wearing sunglasses at the dinner table. The Liquor Store. 9 pm. Free before 10 pm, $5 after. 21+.
Pagan Jug Band
Ain’t no Thanksgiving like a hillbilly Thanksgiving, because at a hillbilly Thanksgiving you’re drunk for three straight days. The O’Neill Public House. 8:30 pm. Free. 21+.
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MUSIC recalling a Siberian interpretation of Dr. John’s Night Tripper persona. Tonight’s set will be particularly special, as he gives “an original channeled performance” he’s calling The Monad. MATTHEW SINGER. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 503-284-4700. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
MONDAY, NOV. 27 The National, This Is the Kit
[BAND OF BROS] Albums by the National almost always end up being slow burners that take a significant investment of time before you see a return. New one Sleep Well Beast is an LP immediately recognizable as “fine,” but it’s nowhere near as ingratiating as Boxer, High Violet or even Alligator. Matt Berninger’s stately croon still rumbles over the epic bombast of the Dessner brothers’ preternatural textures, and the Devandorfs still lay an intricate, sturdy foundation. But you can’t help but notice we’re all getting older, and the requisite time it takes to unlock the National’s genius is getting increasingly harder to find. CRIS LANKENAU. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 503-248-4335. 8 pm. Sold out. All ages.
Casey Crescenzo, whose complex life story has been playing out through the group’s piano-driven ballads and carefully arranged orchestral rock songs for more than a decade. The good news is the Dear Hunter is not breaking up. The bad news is that Crescenzo is indeed ending The Boy’s story and taking the band in another direction. Exactly what that direction that might be is still a mystery. But if the latest single “The Right Wrong,” from the forthcoming All Is As All Should Be EP, is any indication, it won’t stray far from the band’s symphonic rock sound. SHANNON ARMOUR. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 503-231-9663. 9 pm. $25 advance, $27 day of show. 21+.
Strange Ranger, Little Star, Surfer Rosie, Floating Room
TUESDAY, NOV. 28
[TIME TRAVEL] Strange Ranger’s new album, Daymoon, is a wonderful bummer that will resonate with anyone who feels autumn’s slow and mighty current pulling them away from shore. But for listeners of a certain age, Strange Ranger’s delicate plaints will also trigger sublime nostalgia trips. The Portland trio is eerily adept at recreating the magic of turn-ofthe-century Northwest indie rock. The truly modest “Everything Else,” a devastating lullaby clocking in at just over two minutes, deserves a spot right next to Built to Spill’s “Twin Falls” in the canon of small and fragile songs that can somehow withstand dozens of consecutive replays. We need more music like this. CHRIS STAMM. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3895. 8 pm. $5. 21+.
Com Truise, Christopher Willits
The Used, Glassjaw
Animals As Leaders, Periphery, Astronoid
[VIRTUOSIC PROG METAL] See Get Busy, page 25. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 503-225-0047. 7 pm. $25. All ages.
[DJ SET] After a lengthy European tour, synth-wave maestro Seth Haley, otherwise known as Com Truise, is slowing things down a bit. He’s still touring, but he’s playing some of his favorite jams as opposed to re-creating his own stacks of melodic, chilled-out pop. The art director-turned-musician’s retro-futuristic sound—further set in stone by his strong 2017 release, Iteration—virtually guarantees an interesting DJ set. Expect a lot of spacey, ’80s-inspired, cyber-leaning sounds. MARK STOCK. 45 East, 315 SE 3rd Ave. 10 pm. $17 advance, $20 day of show. 21+.
The Dear Hunter, The Family Crest, VAVA
CONT. on page 33 GRAHAM MACINDOE
[PROG ROCK] Last year—after the announcement of the Dear Hunter’s dismally named “The Final Act” tour—rumors of the progressive rock act’s demise nearly crushed their loyal fan base. Not just because it would mean the end of the band, but the conclusion of the epic saga of The Boy, the fictional character dreamed up by frontman
[SCREAMO SURVIVORS] Back in the aughts when Glassjaw and the Used were relevant, a screamo fan’s preference between one or the other functioned as a party-line stance between art and pop, respectively. Since then, the latter has lacked the decency to refrain from releasing the same record over and over, to diminished returns, while the former has languished in purgatory on account of frontman Daryl Palumbo scrapping at least two attempts at a proper follow-up to 2002’s Worship and Tribute. Palumbo says they mean it this time, teasing album No. 3 on this tour. Meanwhile, the Used have accepted that fans only care about the hits from their debut self-titled album that’s celebrating its 15th birthday on this jaunt. Punch an extra hole in that studded white belt and get a babysitter, because this one’s gonna be lit. PETE COTTELL. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave, 971-230-0033. 8 pm. $31.50 general admission, $47 reserved balcony seating. 21+.
DOCKERS: The National play the Schnitz on Monday, Nov. 27. 30
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
PETER RIGAUD
TOP
10
MURRAY (left) with cellist Jan Vogler.
THE BEST AND WORST BILL MURRAY MUSICAL MOMENTS “Star Wars,” Saturday Night Live There may be no more quintessential character in Murray’s oeuvre than Nick the Lounge Singer from the early days of SNL. He took seedy disco-show tune stabs at “Stairway to Heaven” and the theme from Jaws, but it’s his bawdy send-up of Star Wars that’s truly unforgettable.
2 “More Than This,” Lost In Translation Sofia Coppola gave Murray a role that turned another page in his ever-evolving career. He sang Roxy Music’s “More Than This” to Scarlett Johansson with vulnerability and pathos and secured his place in the hearts of yet another generation. 3 “The Best Thing,” Polyester John Waters’ transitional film proved the cult director knew what to do with a million-dollar budget. Some of that money was spent recording a short vocal inspirational—penned by Debbie Harry and Michael Kamen—that finds Murray uplifting Divine’s troubled housewife, Francine Fishpaw. 4 “It Just Doesn’t Matter,” Meatballs While not technically a song, Murray’s impassioned (and improvised) speech to a young group of real campers does feature chanting, rhythmic chops and some of the deepest insight into the futility of existence that’s ever been shared in a kids’ cable-comedy staple. 5 The Dutch Masters Murray was allegedly in a garage-rock band as a suburban Chicago youth, who named themselves after a commercial for a brand of cigars and performed Rolling Stones and Smokey Robinson covers at parties. Young Murray quit the band in 1967 and no recordings seem to exist, but the mere idea warrants inclusion. 6 “Do You Hear What I Hear? (featuring Chris Rock),” A Very Murray Christmas For unknown reasons, in 2015 Murray shot a holiday musical for Netflix. This song proves just how well Murray can sing when he wants to—and that Chris Rock can’t hope to keep up. 7 “The Bare Necessities,” The Jungle Book Even Murray can’t avoid drinking from the Disney teat, as evidenced by his portrayal of a CGI Baloo the Bear in the 2016 liveaction version of The Jungle Book. He delivers an off-key version of “The Bare Necessities,” including a truly uncalled for bit of scat. 8 “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” Murray is a huge Cubs fan, but the national anthem isn’t really his style. Instead, he frequently tackles “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in a style that pitches bluster over panache, and occasionally slips in a Daffy Duck impression for some reason. 9 “Smoke on the Water,” Rock the Kasbah In this ill-conceived 2015 comedy, Murray portrays a has-been rock manager who serenades Afghan villagers with the Deep Purple classic. His reckless attempt to play the famous guitar riff on a native instrument is particularly—and purposely—offensive. 10 “I Will Always Love You,” The Late Show with David Letterman Murray was a guest on the first-ever Letterman episode back in 1982. Nearly 30 years later, he made one final appearance, this time dressed as Liberace, and ended his performance with a cacophonous bit of “I Will Always Love You,” in the style of Whitney Houston and a wounded water buffalo. NATHAN CARSON. SEE IT: Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends play Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, on Tuesday, Nov. 28. 7:30 pm. $50 and up. All ages. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
MUSIC CLASSICAL, JAZZ & WORLD Portland Cello Project’s Tribute to OK Computer
[CLASSICAL ROCK] See Get Busy, page 25. Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St #110, 503-288-3895. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Nov. 24-25. $20. All ages.
Fear No Music presents Common Threads
[COLLABORATIVE COMPOSITION] Composing instrumental music is a notoriously solitary profession. But over the centuries, several composers have teamed up on a single composition, including Brahms and buddies in the 19th century and the rebellious French gang called Les Six, headed by Poulenc and Milhaud. Now, to represent its season-long emphasis on people coming together in divisive times, Fear No Music is creating a compositional collaboration for the 21st century. The Portland newmusic ensemble has enlisted four of the city’s finest emerging composers—Renee FavandSee, Texu Kim, Mike Hsu and Jay Derderian—to each write a movement of a new piece for flute, viola and piano. Bringing some unity from these diverse compositional styles, they’re all writing variations on music from a famously experimental 1885 piano piece by Franz Liszt. The concert also includes music by other contemporary composers: Portland’s Ryan Francis, Kronos Quartet favorite Mary Kouyoumdjian and award-winning Israeli-American composer Shulamit Ran. BRETT
DATES HERE CAMPBELL. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave, 503-222-2031. 7:30 pm Monday, Nov. 27. $10$20. All ages.
The Cult of Orpheus presents The Emerald Tablet
[UPDATING THE ANCIENTS] Portland composer and singerguitarist Christopher Corbell’s recent music often “appropriate[s] the tools created by past aristocracies for revolutionary utterances and radical, transcendental egalitarianism.” That artistic philosophy informed his 2015 opera Viva’s Holiday, based on the memoir of Portland author and strip artist Viva Las Vegas. And it permeates his showcase of recent compositions, including Daphne, a 13-minute, single-scene miniopera for two singers based on the Greek myth. The Emerald Tablet, for four singers and string quartet, draws in baroque and earlier music forms in a setting of an ancient alchemy text that intrigued later thinkers like Isaac Newton and Carl Jung. The show also features a new string quartet, Give Them Space, commissioned by Keller Auditorium for this year’s centennial, and a preview of music from Corbell’s next opera, Antigone and Haimon, which updates Sophocles’ classic tragedy from a feminist, antiauthoritarian perspective. BRETT CAMPBELL. The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave, 503-222-2031. 7:30 pm Tuesday, Nov. 28. $5-$10 sliding scale. All ages.
For more Music listings, visit
TIM SACCENTI
PREVIEW
Flying Lotus, Seven Davis Jr., PBDY [DOING THE ASTRAL PLANE] LA’s electronic, funk and jazz scenes have undergone a renaissance over the last decade, and no one’s more responsible for that than Flying Lotus. As the founder of the Brainfeeder record label, he’s introduced the world to talents like Thundercat, Kamasi Washington, and TOKiMONSTA. As a producer for rappers like Kendrick Lamar, Mac Miller and Chance the Rapper, he’s provided a mainstream entry point for his scene’s rich depth. Most importantly, as a solo musician, he’s fused all the aforementioned genres together on albums like the psychedelic trip-hop masterpiece Los Angeles and 2015’s DMT-fueled post-mortem exploration, You’re Dead! Clearly never content with sitting still and resting on his laurels, FlyLo’s been predominantly focused on film lately, directing, writing and scoring gross-out body-horror film Kuso earlier this year, and more recently scoring a short anime prequel to Blade Runner 2049. His latest tour, billed as “Flying Lotus in 3D,” finds him combining his new passion with his day job. Dude’s always had wildly impressive, trippy visuals at his concerts, but I have a feeling he’ll outdo himself this time. PATRICK LYONS. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 971-230-0033. 8:30 pm Wednesday, Nov. 22. $28.50. 21+. Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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MUSIC
DATES HERE
COURTESY OF TOMMYSTINSON.COM
PROFILE
IT’S A HOOTENANNY: Tommy Stinson (left) and Chip Roberts.
Pure Country Gold HAVING REDEEMED HIS PORTLAND REPUTATION, TOMMY STINSON MOVES FORWARD.
From basements to stadiums and everything in between, Tommy Stinson has left his mark on venues across the world. But not every city has received an apology after he passes through. As the bass player for the Replacements, the legendary and erratic Minneapolis punk band, Stinson earned a legacy of infamy in Portland after a badly flubbed gig in 1987. It was so bad, the band wrote a song apologizing for it. But as he gears up for his fourth Portland performance since 2015—a run that began with the reunited ’Mats performing at Crystal Ballroom—he believes his local reputation is finally redeemed. And by tackling a country- and blues-based sound for his new project, Cowboys in the Campfire, Stinson says he’s completing a cycle. “Country and blues are always the fucking beginning of rock ’n’ roll anyway. So when our bands either break up or whatever, you go right back to the beginning again,” he says. “It’s the nucleus of what we’ve grown up doing.” At 51 years old, Stinson says he is finally coming into his own as a songwriter. Perhaps that’s why he’s spent the last year looking forward rather than backward. In October, the Replacements reached a commercial peak with their first official live album, For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986. Despite its success, Stinson admits he’s not ready to listen to it yet. The recording marks one of the final shows he played with his older brother, guitarist Bob Stinson, who died at age 35. “It’s gonna be hard,” Stinson says. “I know he’s really good on it, but it’s going to be an emotional bid to sit down and listen to it.” Instead of capitalizing on the success of a hit record and re-reuniting with Paul Westerberg, Stinson has focused on other, lesser-known projects. He got back together with his first post-Replacements band, Bash and Pop, and released Anything Could Happen in January. Now, he’s touring with his uncle-in-law, Chip Roberts, in the duo Cowboys in the Campfire. After Stinson got divorced, the pair remained close friends. Their current tour finds them playing atypical venues that put them inches away from the crowd, performing stripped-down versions of his solo material. It’s the kind of face-to-face intimacy that’s impossible to achieve in the clubs and theaters he’s played for the majority of his four-decade career—not to mention the stadium gigs of his 18 years with Guns N’ Roses. “It’s a rewarding bit because you get to see how it really impacts the fans. They’re right there on your tail,” Stinson says. “You’re close enough to smell them and feel them and really hear what their reaction is to what you’re playing.” For Stinson, slowing down is not an option. “There’s no me that’s going to be sitting around at home that’s going to be gratifying unless I’m making music,” Stinson says. “I’ve given up all the lofty goals of being rich and famous and all that crap, and I just kinda do what I do.” CRAIG WRIGHT. SEE IT: Tommy Stinson’s Cowboys in the Campfire play Speck’s Records & Tapes, 8216 N. Denver Ave., on Friday, Nov. 24. 7 p.m. $20-$100. All ages. 34
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
WED. NOV. 22 Alberta Rose Theater 3000 NE Alberta St Jerry Joseph, Kerosene Dream
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Doug Fir Lounge 830 E Burnside St The Pack A.D.
Edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale Jacob Westfall (The Winery Tasting Room )
Hawthorne Theatre
1037 SW Broadway Tori Amos, Scars on 45
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd Mozzy, OMB Peezy
Dante’s
Jack London Revue
350 W Burnside St Dookie Jam!
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St Worth, Moorea Masa and the Mood, Fox and Bones
Edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale Kris Deelane (The Winery Tasting Room)
Jack London Revue 529 SW 4th Ave Joe Manis Trio
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St Champion
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave Flying Lotus, Seven Davis Jr, PBDY
The Fixin’ To
8218 N. Lombard St Atriarch, 1919 (Bauhaus covers), DJ Acid Rick
The Goodfoot
529 SW 4th Ave Midnight’s Children
Kelly’s Olympian
SAT. NOV. 25 Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave 11th Annual Storm Large Holiday Ordeal
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway A Pops Holiday
Artichoke Music Cafe 2007 SE Powell Blvd Michael Shay Trio
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Illenium
Tonic Lounge
511 NW Couch St Micropalooza XIV: Live Chiptune Showcase
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Castle, Bewitcher, Disenchanter
Hawthorne Theatre
Turn! Turn! Turn!
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave The Sportin’ Lifers Trio
Revolution Hall
1300 SE Stark St #110 Portland Cello Project’s Tribute to “OK Computer”
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave Kayzo
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St JoyTribe, Soul Vibrator, Laryssa Birdseye
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Tony Furtado, Jeffrey Martin
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave James Clem
Revolution Hall
The Analog Cafe
Slim’s PDX
4605 NE Fremont St Hot Club of Hawthorne
Speck’s Records & Tapes
116 NE Russell St Wednesday Night Zydeco
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd Russell Street Jam, Mars Retrieval Unit
White Owl Social Club
The Firkin Tavern
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave 11th Annual Storm Large Holiday Ordeal
Alberta Rose Theater 3000 NE Alberta St The Next Waltz
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Mannheim Steamroller
Artichoke Music Cafe 2007 SE Powell Blvd Friday Night Coffeehouse
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St Assisted Living, Photona, Vihara
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St The Broken Crowns Tour feat. Matisyahu, Common Kings, Orphan
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Muddy Rudder Public House
Ground Kontrol
3939 N Mississippi Ave King Black Acid, Ezza Rose, Rob Wynia
The Secret Society
FRI. NOV. 24
1847 East Burnside Street Sweet n’ Juicy Variety Show + Jam
The Old Church
529 SW 4th Ave Kenney Polson
6000 NE Glisan St Pagan Jug Band
Roseland Theater
128 NE Russell St World’s Finest
Mister Theater
2126 SW Halsey St Troutdale Merrill Music (The Winery Tasting Room )
Mississippi Studios
8216 N Denver Ave Tommy Stinson’s Cowboys in the Campfire
8 NW 6th Ave Mogwai, Xander Harris
Wonder Ballroom
1620 SW Park Ave Paquito D’Rivera
Jack London Revue
2025 N Kilpatrick St Minoton, Fill Colons, Pet Weapon
The O’Neill Public House
830 E Burnside St Baio, Teen Daze
836 N Russell St Common Starling, Sean Croghan, Dream Wraith
1037 SW Broadway A Pops Holiday
Roseland Theater
Doug Fir Lounge
White Eagle Saloon
1937 SE 11th Ave Dolphin Midwives, Ant’lrd, Astro Synth Armada
The Fixin’ To
8218 N Lombard St Fetish, Deathcharge, Shadowhouse, G.U.N.
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Skulldozer, A//tar, Meterse
The Secret Society 116 NE Russell St Pete Krebs and his Portland Playboys
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Body Academics, Sweeping Exits, Over
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Hochenkeit, Sad Horse, The Bugs
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd Hurricane Relief Benefit Show: Question Tuesday, Latter Day Skanks, Malnoursihed, The Variants, Chris Hahn Band, Anti-Troy
8 NW 6th Ave Arch Enemy, Trivium
Slim’s PDX
8635 N Lombard St Young Patches, Cascadian Airship
SouthFork
4605 NE Fremont St David Friesen’s Circle Three Trio
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave Harvey Brindell & The Tablerockers
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave The Russ Liquid Test
The Analog Cafe
720 SE Hawthorne Blvd Trophy Eyes, Free Throw, Head North
The Firkin Tavern
1937 SE 11th Ave Sugar Church, Sam Humans, Mondegreen
The Fixin’ To
8218 N. Lombard St Blesst Chest, Miss Rayon, Rebecca Gates
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Boys ll Gentlemen
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Small Skies, Arlo Indigo, Nouveauxfaux
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St Out Of Body Experience, The Macks, Danny Delegato, Nick Caceres
The Secret Society
White Eagle Saloon
116 NE Russell St The Newport Nightingales; The Ukeladies
Wonder Ballroom
Tonic Lounge
836 N Russell St JT Wise Band
128 NE Russell St Con Bro Chill
Zarz On First
814 SW 1st Ave Robbie Laws Band
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
3100 NE Sandy Blvd NorCal Fire Relief Benefit
SUN. NOV. 26 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
Edgefield
1507 SE César E. Chávez Blvd DigiTour Winter
Jack London Revue 529 SW 4th Ave Joyya Marie, Rich Hunter
Le Petite Provence
1824 NE Alberta St Classic Sundays: Live Jazz
Mississippi Pizza 3552 N Mississippi Ave Matthew Fountain, Anna Fritz, Small Souls
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave Dan and Fran
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St Rontoms Sunday Session: Candace, Genders, Hands In
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave Danielle de Picciotto, Alexander Hacke, Soriah
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Ice Princess, The Secret Ceremony, Polygris
The Secret Society
116 NE Russell St The Not-So-Secret Family Show! feat. Mo Phillips, Nathan Earle
Turn! Turn! Turn!
8 NE Killingsworth St Wave Action, Star Club, Oort, Martha Stax Birthday
MON. NOV. 27 Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway The National, This Is the Kit
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Periphery, Animals As Leaders
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St Animals As Leaders, Periphery, Astronoid
Edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale Groovy Wallpaper, Will West (The Winery Tasting Room )
NEEDLE EXCHANGE
Lincoln Performance Hall
2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale Robert Wynia & Friends
Edgefield
SouthFork
THU. NOV. 23
836 N Russell St Hollowdog Happy Hour
Kenton Club
830 E Burnside St Black Pistol Fire, Cobi
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Floating Room, Bethlehem Steel, Lubec and World Record Winner
1305 SE 8th Ave Give!Guide Happy Hour: Mic Capes
White Eagle Saloon
[NOV. 22-28]
106 N. State St, Lake Oswego Michael Allen Harrison & Friends Holiday Show
Doug Fir Lounge
8635 N Lombard St. THMPR, Moogwynd
The Know
8 NE Killingsworth St The Minders, A Kaffer, A Certain Smile, Heartbreak Beats
Lake Theater and Cafe
426 SW Washington St Young Elk, Second Sleep, Gazelle(s), The Mighty Missoula
1300 SE Stark St #110 Portland Cello Project’s Tribute to “OK Computer”
2845 SE Stark St Shafty
Turn! Turn! Turn!
For more listings, check out wweek.com.
MEGAN HOLMES
MUSIC CALENDAR
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.
8105 SE 7th Ave Lloyd Jones
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St Jackson Boone, The Fur Coats, Bryson Cone 1422 SW 11th Ave Fear No Music presents Common Threads
8 NE Killingsworth St Mikey Jodell Matt Brown Nate Wallace and featuring Sarah Gwen
TUE. NOV. 28 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Com Truise, Christopher Willits
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Bill Murray, Jan Vogler & Friends: New Worlds
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St The Dear Hunter, The Family Crest, VAVA
Edgefield
2126 SW Halsey St, Troutdale James Low (The Winery Tasting Room )
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave Strange Ranger, Little Star, Surfer Rosie, Floating Room
Portland Community College Rock Creek Campus 17705 NW Springville Rd Choro da Alegria Plays the Beautiful Melodies of Brazil
Raven and Rose
1331 SW Broadway Na Rósaí
DJ Troubled Youth Years DJing: About eight. Before that I had worked in PR for bands and record labels, tour managing, booking and photography. Genre: When I’m at home it’s all about making weird jazz and R&B edits, but when I’m playing out it’s something else. I love the way footwork gives people energy and life on the dance floor. I also love older hip-hop and R&B edits. Where you can catch me regularly: Every last Saturday at High Water Mark for Judy on Duty. During the summer, I DJ first Sundays at Produce Row for Bridge Club. Craziest gig: I had a residency at Black Book for four years, and one Tuesday night I got a call saying I was needed ASAP to DJ an afterparty for Ty Dolla $ign and his crew. I was across town. So I jumped in my car, raced home, got my gear and raced downtown just as they were pulling up, and played all night. Ty loved some of the tracks I was playing and had me text him the song titles. So crazy! My go-to records: “D-Medley (Dutch E Germ Remix),” Fatima Al Qadiri; “Brighter Dayz,” DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn; “Get Your Footwork (MC Bin Laden Remix),” Kelela; “Honey (Glenn Underground Remix),” Erykah Badu ; “Footworkin’ On Air,” Traxman; “I Get So Lonely (Trap Noir Remix),” Janet Jackson. Don’t ever ask me to play…: Recently I had someone ask me to play Buddy Holly during a party with club music playing. That was confusing. Definitely don’t ask me to play anything from your iPhone unless you have an aux cord and $100. NEXT GIG: Troubled Youth spins at Judy On Duty at High Water Mark, 6800 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, with 187 Moochie, on Saturday, Nov. 25. 10 pm. $5. 21+
Revolution Hall
The Paris Theatre
1300 SE Stark St #110 An Acoustic Evening With Dispatch
6 SW 3rd Ave Bass Gobblers 12 years of House Call
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave The Used, Glassjaw
The Know
3728 NE Sandy Blvd Slutty Hearts, FuzzQueen, OVER
The Old Church
1422 SW 11th Ave The Cult of Orpheus presents The Emerald Tablet
Twilight Cafe and Bar 1420 SE Powell San Francisco Suicide Club, Part Time Perfect, Louder Oceans, Motorcoat
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St Foster’s Kids
WED, NOV. 22 Beulahland
118 NE 28th Ave Wicked Wednesday (hip-hop)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St Testify: Pre-Thanksgiving Dance Party
Killingsworth Dynasty 832 N Killingsworth St Coast2c, Payday Loans, CDVR, Reid Stubblefield
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave Jive Turkey w/ DJ Gregarious
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St 1984 - New Wave Night
The Lovecraft Bar
FRI, NOV. 24
421 SE Grand Ave Event Horizon (darkwave, industrial)
45 East
Tonic Lounge
Bit House Saloon
3100 NE Sandy Blvd Death Throes (death rock, post punk, dark wave)
THU, NOV. 23 Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave Salad Nights w/ Benjamin (international disco, synth, modern dad)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Shadowplay (goth, industrial, 80s)
315 SE 3rd Ave J.Phlip 727 SE Grand Ave Believe You Me presents Eddie C.
Black Book
20 NW 3rd Ave The Cave (rap, r&b, club)
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St 80’s Video Dance Attack
Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Jimbo (funk, rap, r&b)
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St DJ Nate C. (metal)
BAR REVIEW
BUZZ LIST Where to drink this week.
ABBY GORDON
TOP 5
1. Saraveza
1004 N Killingsworth St., 503-206-4252, saraveza.com. Through December, Saraveza is tapping a different barrel from the larders each and every week: cool stuff, rare stuff, old stuff. Cool.
2. The Trap
3805 SE 52nd Ave., 503-777-6009. Karaoke dive the Trap on Foster has gotten itself a makeover, with a new enclosed patio and marble-topped bar. But don’t worry: It’s still the Trap.
3. Growler’s Taproom
3343 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971-229-0972, growlers.net. Long a poor cousin among bottle shops, Growler’s has new owners, a great, new taplist, a nice patio with a food cart and a friendly former Brewers Guild president behind the bar. Hooo!
4. Stammtisch
401 NE 28th Ave., 503-206-7983, stammtischpdx.com. Stammtisch just added an echt-Deutsch choucroute garnie. Do something different and have it with German wine instead of beer.
5. Bar Casa Vale
215 SE 9th Ave., 503-477-9081, barcasavale.com. Is it weird that in the winter we’re spending this much time thinking about Bar Casa Vale’s city-beating añejo daiquiri? Maybe it’s the hearth fire that makes it seem wintry.
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St SNAP! 90s Dance Party
THIRSTY NO MORE: When the Thirsty Lion sports bar left downtown Portland after 10 years, its owner John Plew said it was because the streets of Old Town had become too rough. Our bartender at the Alderman’s Portland Tavern (71 SW 2nd Ave., 971-229-1657, aldermanspdx.com) thought that was ridiculous. “Compared to the downtowns of other major cities?” he says. “I mean, this place is safer than downtown Eugene.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine terrible things happening inside Alderman’s, a sparsely decorated pub in the former Thirsty Lion space loosely themed after the elder men of Portland. A drawing of city founder Francis Pettygrove adorns the window, while Stephen Skidmore presides over the shuffleboard table declaring that there should one day be a fountain that could slake the thirst of “men, horses and dogs.” The new owners have made a few upgrades since the Lion fled town, notably a copper bar, a much-improved taplist including both of the best Pilsners in Oregon (Pfriem and Upright), and a stiff and cheap cocktail menu that includes a very boozy $8 IPA Manhattan whose ingredients are exactly as they sound. On the one hand, a cavernous sports barn with Blazers banners on the walls and eight TVs showing FIFA World Cup qualifiers on our visit, the pub has also made efforts on the food menu. The tortillas on the pulled pork nachos ($10) were baked fresh, the kraut is house-pickled and the pastrami house-smoked. The bacon and blue cheese burger, though a hefty $15, included an estimable quantity of both beef and pork. It is, all in all, an admirable clean-up job. As for what had to be done in Eugene? “Well,” our bartender told us, “they banned all the dogs.” MATTHEW KORFHAGE Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave No Vacancy 030 feat. Doorly
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St Switch. (queer, kink, house)
Moloko
3967 N. Mississippi Ave Monkeytek & Friends (records from the Jamaican regions of outer space)
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave The Get Down
The Goodfoot
2845 SE Stark St Soul Stew (funk, soul, disco)
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Club Kai Kai vs. Jump Jack Sound Machine
Tryst
19 SW 2nd Ave Decadent 80’s w/ DJ Bad Wizard
SAT, NOV. 25 45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Morgan Page
Beech Street Parlor
412 NE Beech Street DDDJJJ666 & Magnolia Bouvier
Bossanova Ballroom 722 E Burnside St Blowpony
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St 90’s Dance Flashback
Eastburn
1800 E Burnside St Soulsa! (merengue, salsa)
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St Main Squeeze Dance Party (house, disco, techno)
Killingsworth Dynasty
832 N Killingsworth St Special Edition: Strange Babes Soul & Funk Revue
MON, NOV. 27 Dig A Pony
Moloko
736 SE Grand Ave OOPS w/ Tre Slim & J. Green (80s synth pop)
The Analog Cafe
The Lovecraft Bar
The Lovecraft Bar
TUE, NOV. 28
3967 N. Mississippi Ave Lamar Leroy (jams of all types) 720 SE Hawthorne Blvd ANDAZ: Bhangra Bollywood Dance Party 421 SE Grand Ave Electronomicon (darkwave, goth)
SUN, NOV. 26 Dig A Pony
736 SE Grand Ave Do Right Sunday w/ Deena Bee
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave Softcore Mutations presents VCR TV w/ DJ Acid Rick & DJ Kyle-Reese (synth, wave)
421 SE Grand Ave Black Mass (goth, darkwave)
45 East
315 SE 3rd Ave Com Truise, Christopher Willits
The Embers Avenue 100 NW Broadway Recycle (dark dance)
The Liquor Store
3341 SE Belmont St Love American Style
The Lovecraft Bar
421 SE Grand Ave BONES w/ DJ Aurora (goth, wave)
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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ARTS CHELSEA PETRAKIS
PERFORMANCE
Next Holiday Shopper out 12/6! Is your business interested in a product feature?
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MIND-BENDING: Psychic Utopia’s ensemble cast
The Seeker
PSYCHIC UTOPIA IS A MESMERIZING, BIZARRE DEPICTION OF COMMUNE LIFE. BY B EN N ETT CA MPB ELL FER GU SON
The shortest way to describe Psychic Utopia is to say it captures the rise and fall of a fictional Oregon commune. It’s called the Center, and like most communes, it’s a destination for people who are seeking love, friendship and spiritual enlightenment. Yet, recounting the play’s loose plot doesn’t begin to do it justice. Psychic Utopia fills you with the same heady feeling its characters seek: the intoxicating thrill of venturing into the unknown. Those characters include a disgruntled former swimsuit model (Sascha Blocker), a Parisian hungry to escape a loveless marriage (Jenni Green-Miller) and a gay man recovering from anorexia and electroshock therapy (JeanLuc Boucherot). The nameless characters are all led to the Center by a desire to be liberated from what they believe to be oppressively mundane lives. But as the play progresses, the Center is revealed to be another form of oppression. Written by playwright Andrea Stolowitz, the cast and director Jonathan Walters, Psychic Utopia kicks off Hand2Mouth’s first official season. Though the company has been creating some of the city’s most adventurous theater for over a decade, they’ve never produced plays on a regular schedule. Clearly, the change doesn’t mean they’re domesticating. Before the play even begins, Psychic Utopia lets you know that its artistic ambition matches that of its risk-taking characters. As you enter the theater, the actors offer you a warm, scented cloth and invite you to remove your shoes. Throughout the play, the actors interrupt the narrative to interact with the audience, sometimes just to simply say things like, “Thank you for being present with us tonight.” Psychic Utopia is based on actual accounts of commune life, so it’s no surprise that it depicts the Center with both rapturous fascination and muckraking realism. In the beginning when the char38
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
acters tumble into an idyllic world of meditation, drugs, therapy and free love, the theater’s lighting is low and romantic. But as the dubious machinations of the Center’s leadership are revealed, the lighting becomes bright and harsh, forcing us to see the Center for what it really is: a scam calculated to ensnare the desperate, the lonely and the naive. But Psychic Utopia isn’t a heavy-handed critique of society. Rather than pity or psychoanalyze the characters, the play simply seeks to understand their lives at the Center. That means illuminating the commune’s darker side, but it also means acknowledging that the Center really does offer glorious, mind-expanding experiences. Psychic Utopia is a mind-expanding experience in its own right. The play flows dreamily from one moment to the next, powered by eerie, ambient music. That spirit of wondrous weirdness extends to the actors, who deliver most of their lines in hushed, hypnotic voices, except for a heartpounding scene where they rampage across the stage, waving streamers and chanting nonsensically in rough, animalistic voices. It’s a bizarre sight, but it’s also a mesmerizing illustration of how life at the Center has unleashed a primal aggression its inhabitants have long suppressed. Near the end of the play, the actors ask you to turn to the person sitting next to you and ask, “What are you seeking?” It’s a question that’s next to impossible to answer. Yet there is something beautiful about the play’s generous and inclusive spirit. Psychic Utopia is largely about how the Center, for all its flaws, unites a group of strangers simply by asking them to listen to each other. Fittingly, the play strives to do the same. SEE IT: Psychic Utopia is at New Expressive Works, 810 SE Belmont St., hand2mouththeatre.org. 7:30 pm through Dec. 2 and at 2 pm Dec. 3. $25.
VISUAL ARTS INTISAR ABIOTO
FEATURE
FAMILY PHOTO: Vin and Harlow Shambry
In the Moment
BLACK PORTLANDERS, BLACK PORTLAND DISPLAYS FLEETING MOMENTS. BY SHANNON GORMLEY
sgormley@wweek.com
For her exhibit, Black Portlanders, Black Portlands photographer Intisar Abioto has taken on a daunting task: “I wanna refer to the beauty and the depth of our complexity, of something that can’t be explained, that won’t be defined, that can’t be pinned down,” she says. Abioto sits on the ledge of a large window in the Littman Gallery that overlooks PSU’s park blocks. Wrapped around the white-walled gallery like an asteroid belt are over 150 prints of photos Abioto has taken for her blog The Black Portlanders. Since she started the blog almost five years ago, she’s photographed hundreds of people, from politicians to artists to community leaders to survivors of the Vanport flood and strangers she’s passed on the street. For her exhibit at Littman, she had to fit just a fraction of those five years of photographs, chance interactions, legacies and lives into a single room. Abioto says it wasn’t easy. “I feel like Black Portlanders are awesome and amazing, and our presence is important. The level of the art needs to match the importance of these individuals,” says Abioto. “I stayed here overnight one night, just moving things by an inch or something.” The photos in Black Portlanders, Black Portlands range in size from a few feet across to barely larger than a postcard.
They’re vibrant and warmly lit, but not oversaturated. Some are conventional portraits, like a particularly striking upclose photo of Donna Maxey, who housed people displaced by the Vanport flood. But there are also photos that depict a clear scene, like the one of activist Rachel Gilmer on a street at night raising her fist in the air and wearing an “I Can’t Breathe” pin. In another, actor and artist Vin Shambry stands with his infant daughter cradled in his arm. They gaze serenely into Abioto’s camera. Black Portlanders, Black Portlands is only the third gallery show of Abioto’s work. “I’m still learning how to do it— how to hold these images, how to take care of them,” says Abioto. “I just keep wanting it to be the best that it can be, even if it’s daunting.” But the more Abioto talks about her art, it becomes clear that “still learning” is its own form of mastery. “I want to keep exploring Blackness,” she says. “I want to keep exploring not just the word, but the infinite nature of what the word refers to and cannot ever explain,” she says. I n t h a t w a y, B l a c k P o r t l a n d e rs i s n ’t j u st a b o u t t h e p h ot o s t h e m selves, but how Abioto interacts with them. Every time she holds a show, s h e t r i e s t o i nv i t e a s m a ny o f t h e people in the photographs as she can. Even if they weren’t hanging in a student-run gallery, Abioto says her
photos for Black Portlanders would not be for sale. “In this culture and this time period where people are being so diminished and so invalidated,” says Abioto, “It’s absolutely my intent to do the complete opposite.” You can see Abioto’s care for the people she’s photographed, even in the way she’s displayed each work. The photos are printed on matte, unframed paper. They’re hung by clear white thumbtacks and black paper clips. Many are labeled with small captions that Abioto has handwritten in pencil on the gallery walls. Some say the name of the person in the photo, others simply say things like “sisters.” It appears to be done impulsively, like a scrawled label on the back of a family photo. “These are all moments from my life,” says Abioto. “I sat across from all these people. I spoke with them. I asked them their names. I spent time with them.” But they are just moments, and that isn’t something Abioto is trying to change. By design, photography turns a fleeting moment into something permanent. But Abioto actively resists falling into that pattern. “I can’t pin these people down. That would be a violence for me to say I know who these people are,” she says. Many of the photos have imperfections that seem like they ’re meant to remind you that what you see on the
gallery wall is just a fragment of the person, let alone the moment the photo was taken. There’s a portrait of John Bryant, grandmaster of the Sons of Haiti Masonic Lodge on Mississippi Avenue, in which he squarely faces the camera in front of a teal wall. It would be a conventional portrait if it weren’t for the fact that Abioto’s lens caught him in a moment when his eyes were closed. It’s that sense of how temporary Abioto’s work is that makes her art so powerful. Her art is not just about the image that ends up on the gallery wall, it’s about that moment when Abioto walked up to people who have shaped this city or to a stranger on the street, asked them their name and if she could take their picture. More than just portraits, the photos are stills from a moment when two lives intersected. “Human connection is an opening. Art is an opening,” says Abioto. “It allows surprise, it allows room for what we don’t understand, it allows room for what we could understand.” “There’s so much information and detail in all these people,” she adds. “This is just a blip.” SEE IT: Black Portlanders, Black Portlands is at the Littman Gallery, 1825 SW Broadway, Room 250, theblackportlanders.com. Through Nov. 30.
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Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
C O U R T E S Y O F S O O T H S AY M E D I A
MOVIES Screener
GET YO U R REPS IN
Mannequin
(1987)
Kim Cattrall is so underrated. 5th Avenue, Nov. 24-26.
Psycho
(1960)
Drenched in symbolism and timelessly iconic, Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece is every obsessive person’s dream. This weekend, NW Film will also screen a new documentary called 78/52 that’s just about the shower scene. NW Film Center, Nov. 25-26.
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
DJ Wicked at Wicked Wednesday
Totally Wicked
Thelma & Louise
@Hortland
In the autumn of 1997, Kirk “DJ Wicked” Kirkpatrick heard about a raggedy new Ladd’s Addition nightclub named Jezebel’s that had a mid-week opening slot for a regular act. A former graffiti artist and skilled turntablist—he’d battle for a $250K prize on 2011 BET reality show Master of the Mix— Kirkpatrick brought around a crate of vinyl the following Wednesday for the first iteration of what soon became a treasured hub. Over the next two decades, Wicked Wednesday would survive the closure of more than half a dozen venues, and serve as prime showcase for local MCs sharpening their skills on the open mic. But the fiercely communal nature of the event kept Portland’s longest-running DJ night well outside mainstream attention. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wicked Wednesday, now at Beulahland near East Burnside, Kirkpatrick sought out the services of a documentarian via social media. He eventually lured the project’s director—Bay Area-transplant Andy Ridgway—from a Facebook post. Before the film’s premier at the Clinton Street Theatre, Kirkpatrick and Ridgway reminisced with WW about the proudly underground event. WW: What were the early days of Wicked Wednesday like? Kirk Kirkpatrick: Jezebel’s? In ’97? It was just a classic old SE Portland dive, you know – beer-stained carpets, smells like piss. Nothing fancy. Now, everyone has a DJ night, but then? For hip-hop? They were few and far between. You could go and see DJs here and there, but I don’t know if there was necessarily one consistent hip-hop night anywhere in Portland.
But then Jezebel’s closed around 2000? KK: Ultimately, it was the neighbors. They had to cancel all the DJ nights because of so many noise complaints, and the bar didn’t survive much longer after that. Andy Ridgway: It definitely left its mark. That’s where the foundation was laid, and the Jezebel’s days are really still the heartbeat of Wicked Wednesday. That’s the picture that’s in everybody’s mind despite the fact that it’s been in six or seven different venues over the course of 20 years. How’d the open mic start? KK: The MCs were already there in attendance just as fans of the music, but, eventually, we started doing this thing every Wednesday—MC Cypher. At midnight, they would come gather around the DJ booth and just pass around the mic. It definitely became a thing. A lot of the MCs will even to this day show up at 11:55 just for their chance to be heard. Anyone we might know? KK: Mic Crenshaw, Sandpeople, Oldominion, Al One, Illmaculate … AR: There are people that come to listen but also get on the mic at midnight. People that DJ with their computers a couple of nights at different venues but then drag out their crate of records to come to Wicked Wednesday because they want to do a set of old vinyl. That’s part of the appeal and the beauty of the night. Even if Wicked comes with the same crate of 50 records for a whole month, it’s never going to be the same because of the other DJs rotating in and out of there every week.
You had breakdancers? KK: Breakdancers, yeah. Still do. Graffiti. All the elements. It’s traditionally been the gathering place for graffiti writers, breakdancers, rappers, DJs—kind of like the hub for all those people—and it still captures a lot of the same old characters and the same old charm as it always has. We really try to preserve what it was like 20 years ago. Was it difficult to capture that era in the movie? KK: He incorporated a lot of old photos. Not everyone had a camera phone 20 years ago. AR: We did have a little bit from the Jezebel’s era, but it’s more of a general overview—some breakdancers, some DJs and the crowd . . . It’s not really a historical record of the Wicked Wednesday story from beginning to end. It’s more like this is what the night is and has always been. What did you discover about Wicked Wednesday as you were making the film? AR: There’s a whole cast of characters that I interviewed for the movie, and what surprised me the most about the people I talked to was the emotional element. There was this consistent vibe to longtime patrons where you could tell they loved going there. Being a part of that tight-knit community is a big deal. It’s special. It’s like a family.
(1991)
Laurelhurst keeps their Smash the Patriarchy Month rolling with two of the baddest bitches in the history of road-trip movies. Laurelhurst, Nov. 22.
The Room
(2003)
Holy shit—thee Tommy Wiseau is going to be in Portland mere days before the release of The Room comedy biopic starring James Franco as Wiseau. There’ll be a Q&A with Wiseau after a screening of his baffling “black comedy.” Cinema 21, Nov. 24-26.
ALSO PLAYING: Clinton: Brazil (1985), Nov. 27. Academy: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Nov. 22. Clue. (1985), Nov. 24-30. Hollywood: The Iron Horse (1924), Nov. 25. The Secret of Nimh (1982), Nov. 26. Alligator (1980), Nov. 28. Kiggins: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Nov. 24-27. Laurelhurst: The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Nov. 24-30. Mission: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Nov. 22. NW Film: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), Nov. 25. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Nov. 26. COURTESY OF TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX
PORTLAND’S LONGEST-RUNNING DJ NIGHT RELEASES A DOCUMENTARY BY JAY H O RTO N
The deluge of holiday movies screening around the city is almost upon us. But right now, it’s either this or Planes, Trains and Automobiles (See “Also Playing”). Mission, Nov. 24-28.
SEE IT: Wicked Wednesday: The Documentary premieres at Clinton Street Theatre, 2522 SE Clinton St., cstpdx.com. 6 pm. Free.
Mannequin Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
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MOVIES : This movie sucks, don’t watch it. : This movie is entertaining but flawed. : This movie is good. We recommend you watch it. : This movie is excellent, one of the best of the year.
NOW PLAYING Coco
Pixar’s transcendent fable is filled with visual wonders. There’s a band of skeletons in pink jackets and a winged, emerald-furred cougar. Yet like Inside Out, Coco offers not only vibrant colors and surreal visions, but a ravishing adventure. It follows a young boy named Miguel (voiced by Anthony Gonzalez) who lives in Mexico and dreams of becoming a musician like his long-dead idol, Ernesto de la Cruz (Benjamin Bratt). Miguel’s family disapproves of his guitarfilled dreams, but Coco isn’t Footloose for musicians—it’s a Dia de los Muertos odyssey that sends Miguel on a trippy trek to the afterlife, where he seeks validation from de la Cruz’s fame-hungry ghost. Director Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) imagines the Land of the Dead as a world populated by delightful mischief makers like Héctor (Gael Garcia Bernal), who enters the story disguised as Frida Kahlo. Nestled beneath the film’s cheery mayhem, however, is an overwhelmingly powerful meditation on memory, mortality and familial love. Miguel may make some extraordinary discoveries in the great beyond, but the most beautiful thing in Coco is his realization that the only place he wants to journey to is the home he left behind. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad Theater, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Moreland, Oak Grove, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub, Tigard, Vancouver.
STILL SHOWING American Made
American Made is like a black-market Forrest Gump—just slick and loose enough to outweigh its historical foolishness. It tells the hyperbolized story of pilot Barry Seal (Tom Cruise), who flew covert smuggling missions for the CIA and Medellín drug cartel in the early ’80s.Seal’s wild brushes with figures like Oliver North, Manuel Noriega and George W. Bush are rendered with narration and montage. Director Doug Liman doesn’t just make Tom Cruise act, he makes him sweat and stumble through the action sequences. The director-star dynamic made a hit of their first movie together (Edge of Tomorrow), and it’s what makes American Made work, too. R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Academy, Laurelhurst, Vancouver.
Battle of the Sexes
Battle of the Sexes had every excuse to be a straightforward biopic. It retells the epic 1973 tennis match between rising women’s tennis star Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and aging legend Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell), who publicly proclaimed he could beat King because she is a woman and he is a man. It’s already an epic premise that could have just piggybacked on Emma Stone’s post-La La Land high. But it goes further, creating multidimensional characters and taking a nuanced look at gender dynamics in the ’70s.. PG-13. LAUREN TERRY. Living Room Theaters.
Blade Runner 2049
With an overwhelming dissonant, bassy score by Hans Zimmer, 2049 looks and sounds spectacular. But as a testament to the influence of the original, there isn’t much 2049 has to add about how technology blurs our sense of self and soul. 2049 seems less concerned with tiny moments of emotion than big reveals from a twisty plot that seems to define 2049’s imaginative boundaries rather than expand them. Still, it’s one hell of a spectacle. R. SHANNON GORMLEY. Bridgeport, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Living Room Theaters, Lloyd, Tigard.
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Dunkirk
In Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. we get to follow a few soldiers and pilots and civilians at sea, but they’re more like stand-ins for the other 400,000 like them marooned on the beach or assisting in the rescue effort. That’s fine, though. This movie doesn’t really need characters, and wasting time on distracting details like what’s waiting at home for these boys would only slow down the headlong pacing of the operation. I don’t think this film will win Best Picture at next year’s Oscars, but it’s a shoo-in a handful of technical nominations. PG-13. R. MITCHELL MILLER. Empirical, Vancouver.
The Florida Project
Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Kimberly Prince) lives in a harsh, impoverished world. The Florida Project’s heroine resides in a budget motel. Her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), is so strapped for cash that she has to work as a petty thief and a prostitute to make rent. The movie makes you worry that both mother and daughter will either starve, go broke or, given their delightful but dangerous recklessness, be dead by the time the end credits roll. Yet director Sean Baker’s luminous odyssey overflows with wit and joy. That’s mainly because of the happiness Moonee finds with her friend Jancey (Valeria Cotto) as they frolic across the sun-soaked outskirts of Orlando, Fla. Rather than begging us to pity these pint-sized scoundrels, Baker (Tangerine) lets us bask in the joy of their parentfree adventures. Most of all, there’s the wild image of Moonee and Jancey sprinting together, laying claim to a world that may be brutal and imperfect, but is still theirs. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Fox Tower.
Goodbye Christopher Robin
If you don’t want Winnie the Pooh’s innocence ruined by publicity stunts, Oedipal anguish and World War I flashbacks, you should avoid this biopic of writer A.A. Milne. Otherwise, Goodbye Christopher Robin is a bland but fascinating creation myth. In the film’s first act, Milne (Domhnall Gleeson) is passionate about a decidedly not-childish project—a pacifist manifesto inspired by the trauma he experienced from servicing in the War to End All Wars. Yet, he ends up crafting a book inspired by the stuffed-animal pals of his son Christopher Robin. the movie holds your gaze because Milne is a brittle and unforgettable figure: a tormented veteran who, like many of us when we revisit the sweet and blissful adventures of Pooh, longs to slip into youthful dreams. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, Laurelhurst.
Killing of A Sacred Deer Steve Murphy (Colin Farrell) is living the American dream. He’s a successful cardiologist who lives in the suburbs with his wife Anna (Nicole Kidman) and their two children. But it doesn’t take long into The Killing of the Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos’ follow-up to The Lobster, before we realize that something is off. The Murphys seem devoid of any kind of familial affection or emotion. Things seem stable in the Murphy’s hyperlogical world until we meet an awkward teenager named Martin (Barry Keoghan). Steve took Martin under his wing after his father died on the cardiologist’s operating table. When Martin is revealed to be a sinister supernatural presence, the tension of the psychological thriller begins to build. Ultimately, Sacred Deer disrupts your understanding of familial love and loyalty so much that by the end of the movie, you’re forced to succumb to a world where logic cannot survive. R. SETH SHALER. Bridgeport, Cinema 21, Clackamas, Hollywood.
Willamette Week NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
Lady Bird
In Greta Gerwig’s writer/director debut, Christine, who insists on being called Lady Bird, is a high school senior growing up in Sacramento, which she loathingly refers to as the Midwest of California. Desperate to break free from mediocrity, Lady Bird slowly abandons her theater-kid friends for a group of rich kids. With that familiar premise and warm, faded lighting, Gerwig has crafted a sprawling story in which every character is subject to Gerwig’s absurd humor as much as her deep empathy. Lady Bird comes alive in its moments of teenage freedom. But what makes the movie so uniquely touching is Lady Bird’s tense interactions with her mom—It’s rare to see a relationship between two complicated women portrayed with such care and empathy. Still, Lady Bird is endearing because of her boldness, not in spite of it. R. SHANNON GORMLEY. Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Lloyd, Tigard.
Victoria & Abdul
Even the power of Judi Dench’s fearsome gaze isn’t enough to redeem Victoria & Abdul, a whitesavior fantasy from director Stephen Frears (Philomena, The Queen). At the center of the plot is Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), an Indian prison clerk who travels to England to present Queen Victoria (Dench, who also played Queen Victoria in 1997’s Mrs Brown) with a ceremonial coin. We learn little of Abdul’s life, family or personality. Instead, the film uses him as a means for Victoria to prove her nobility. It’s meant to be a tender story of an unlikely friendship, but it’s hardly about friendship at all. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, City Center, Clackamas, Fox Tower.
Wonderstruck
Wonderstruck interlocks heartfelt storylines about two deaf children who run away to New York City, Ben (Oakes Fegley) and Rose (Millicent Simmonds). The eighth movie by Portland-based director Todd Haynes (I’m Not There, Far From Heaven) is unabashedly sentimental. Rose and Ben wander through the city with the kind of sage wisdom only 12-year-olds can possess, where bravery and naivety are indistinguishable. Eventually, Ben and Rose’s connection is explained through a lengthy, didactic monologue. It pulls the loose ends a little too tight, and some previously miraculous moments lose their magic once they’re revealed to serve a plot summary. But even when its symbolism is more on the nose than evocative, Wonderstruck’s message about finding wonder in daily life is still vivid. PG. SHANNON GORMLEY. Fox Tower, Hollywood.
REVIEW
Last Flag Flying
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Larry (Steve Carrell), Sal (Bryan Cranston) and Richard (Laurence Fishburne) served together in Vietnam. Larry seeks out his two old war buddies and enlists them to help him transport his son’s remains to New Hampshire for burial. We’ve known for a while now that Carrell is more than just Michael Scott, but his acting here hit me like a grenade. The only gunshots fired in the two-hour runtime are ceremonial. Yet I left the theater feeling emotionally battered like I had just sat through a war movie. R. R. MITCHELL MILLER. Living Room.
The Snowman
Adapted from a best-selling novel by Jo Nesbø, The Snowman tells the story of Detectives Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) and Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) trying to find a serial killer who targets married women with children. The killer strikes whenever there’s a fresh snowfall, and leaves behind a snowman as a creepy calling card. The film’s biggest problem is that it’s been stretched to the seams with thin plot points and shifting perspectives, leaving us with no time to explore and forcing us to think about what is happening rather than what could happen. R. R MITCHELL MILLER. Vancouver.
Suburbicon
Written by Joel and Ethan Coen, Suburbicon’s title refers to the name of the town where the film takes place, a planned 1950s hellscape of a community. It’s home to Gardner Lodge (Matt Damon), the milquetoast vice president of finance for local corporation Pappas & Swain, Gardner’s paraplegic wife Rose (Julianne Moore), their son Nicky (Noah Jupe) and Rose’s sister Maggie (Moore). Suburbicon claims to be idyllic, but really, it was built as a haven for racist white people. We experience this through the plight of the Mayers, a black family who move in next to the Lodges at the beginning of the movie. Their neighbors build fences to separate themselves from the Mayer family. Naturally, none of these “nice folks” harbor any suspicions about Gardner, who is masterminding an insurance fraud that will go horribly wrong. It’s directed by George Clooney who, along with cinematographer Robert Elswit, does an admirable approximation of the brothers’ visual style. The Mayers subplot is not given enough space for nuanced commentary. As it is, it’s an oversimplification. Suburbicon is sort of like a one-man band. It may sound muddled, but it’s unique enough that it’s hard to look away. R. R MITCHELL MILLER. Academy, Laurelhurst.
Thor: Ragnarok
The film pits Thor (Chris Hemsworth), the forever-buff God of Thunder, against yet another apparently indestructible menace: his genocidal sister Hela (Blanchett), who wears a creepy, antler-covered helmet. She has good reason to despise Thor, but any hint of pathos is squashed by lazy writing— the movie expects you to giggle every time someone says the word “anus.” It’s a glorified commercial for next year’s Avengers: Infinity War. PG-13. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bagdad Theater, Bridgeport, Cedar Hills, Cinemagic Theatre, City Center, Clackamas, Division, Eastport, Lloyd, Milwaukie, Moreland, Oak Grove, Pioneer Place, St. Johns Twin Cinema & Pub, Tigard, Vancouver.
SENDING A MESSAGE: Woody Harrelson and Sam Rockwell
The Writing on the Billboards THREE BILLBOARDS DEPICTS A STRANGE TOWN DEALING WITH A TRAGEDY. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri opens with Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) driving down a rural road. A year ago, her daughter Angela was raped and murdered. Now, the case has stalled for the hothead Ebbing police department. But along the road, she finds what she believes could be path forward in the form of three decrepit billboards. “What’s the law on what you can and can’t say on a billboard?” she asks the manager of Ebbing Advertising Co. “I assume you can’t say nothing defamatory, and you can’t say ‘Fuck’, ‘Piss’ or ‘Cunt’?” She decides to rent the billboards so that they display three messages: “Raped While Dying ”; “And Still No Arrests?”; “How Come, Chief Willoughby?” Mildred has been through hell and believes that “the more you keep a case in the public eye, the better the chances of getting the case solved.” But the billboards divide the town. The residents of Ebbing are forced to choose between the mother whose daughter was brutally killed and the popular Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), who’s dying of pancreatic cancer. It would be easy to imagine the premise as a seriously dark and thoughtful drama. But in the hands of writer/director Martin McDonagh, what emerges is a seriously dark and thoughtful comedy. Apart from McDormand and Harrelson, Three Billboards has a large and talented ensemble cast. The townspeople of Ebbing are all a little (or a lot) off. There’s Dixon (Sam Rockwell), a cop who’s more inclined to violently defend the honor of his bumbling cronies than perform actual police work. John Hawkes plays Mildred’s exhusband, Charlie, who copes with the tragedy by dating a 19-year-old. Then there’s Peter Dinklage as James, a mustachioed barfly. In one of the film’s best scenes, Mildred and James go out on a date where he acknowledges that while he’s not much of a catch, she’s not much of a catch, either. In the town of Ebbing, what constitutes as a “catch?” Still, each character does their own small part to breathe life into their town, which on one hand is creepy and on the other is compassionate and quick to forgive. R MITCHELL MILLER. SEE IT: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is now playing at Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., hollywoodtheatre.org. $9.
POTLANDER
Are You High? THERE’S AN APP THAT WILL TELL YOU. BY MATT STA N GEL
Sure, you might catch a stoned driver with these It’s a scenario all weed methods, but false posismokers face at some tives are just as plaupoint or another: You’ve sible. enjoyed a touch of the DRUID, Dr. Milgreen, hours have burn’s sobriety-test passed and the effects app for the stoner set, seem to have come and offers a better way. gone. You feel okay to “DRUID is an drive, but you’re just app that provides a not sure about which general measure of side of sobriety you’d impairment using fall on if your level of neuropsychological intoxication were judged testing,” says Milburn. by a trained professional. At the intersection of Well, now there’s an video game and roadsideapp for that. s o b r i et y t e st , M i l b u r n Over the last year and a half, claims the methods are Massachusetts-based retired psybacked by “data that shows [the LEAH MALDONADO chology professor Dr. Michael Milapp’s] reliability and validity in preburn built an app-based sobriety test called dicting impairment.” DRUID that’s designed specifically with the DRUID works like this: A user signs in cautious cannabis user in mind. Milburn hatched and is given the option to take a two- or fivethe idea over a bag of vapor while celebrating a minute test, after which they’re prompted to friend’s purchase of a shiny, new Volcano. choose from three modules that detect sympThe recently retired professor, who’d spent toms of cannabis intoxication, such as reaction 40 years “figuring out ways to measure things,” time and decision-making, hand-eye coordinawondered, in his words, “Gee, how would you tion and time estimation. measure how stoned a person is?” Considering One module, intended to gauge a user’s reacMilburn’s long career researching and develop- tion and decision-making time, involves clicking “ways to measure things”—the intellectual ing on or avoiding shapes that rapidly appear artifacts include a book called Sexual Intelligence, and disappear on a user’s screen. Another which introduced Milburn’s scale for sexual module assesses intoxication by testing a user’s intelligence—the idle academic was the perfect time-estimation abilities—asking the user to person to examine the methods by which canna- judge when a minute has passed while tapping bis intoxication is measured. on circles at random spatial and chronologiMilburn discovered that current tests for cal intervals. A third module has users stand determining if a person is high—which vary from on one leg for 30 seconds while trying to keep state to state—are flawed. perfectly still, and a hand-eye coordination secIf you’re pulled over in Oregon and an officer tion where impaired drivers track a moving dot thinks you’re stoned, you’ll be asked to perform with their finger while counting the number of a series of field-sobriety tests. These are the ones shapes that flash on the screen. you’ve seen on Cops for decades: walk a line and A new user is advised to practice the tests a pivot, follow the flashlight with your eyes, count few times before setting their baseline scores. backwards from 70 to 50, etc. Milburn recently lent his technology to If the officer deems the driver unfit to oper- a police academy in Randolph, Mass., where ate a vehicle based on their performance of DRUID was employed during training sessions. these tests, the driver is then referred to a drug DRUID, Milburn claims, was more reliable and recognition expert who administers additional accurate in detecting intoxication than tradiassessments, as well as a breathalyzer to rule out tional officer assessments. alcohol and a urinalysis to detect and measure In this way, DRUID removes the subjective the presence of cannabis metabolites. Should element that is human judgement—opting cannabis metabolites be found in the driver’s instead for quantifiable, data-driven analysis urine, DUI charges are filed. to determine if a person is indeed too stoned The problems with this procedure are several to drive. and severe: First off, field-sobriety tests are taiMilburn can see applications in the insurlored to expose alcohol intoxication, and they’re ance industry—a possible future where drivers notorious for producing false positives when it use DRUID before they get behind the wheel, comes to weed. These tests also rely on the sub- submitting the results to their insurance projective judgement of a police officer. vider to secure cheaper premiums. Personally, Perhaps more controversial is the urinalysis, I’d be surprised if companies like Uber and Lyft which detects the presence of THC-COOH—a don’t eventually adopt technologies similar to substance that can linger in the human body for DRUID—both as a safe-ride guarantee and as a weeks after a person last ingested cannabis. way to lower their insurance premiums.
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SUDOKU PUZZLE 44
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37 Ab ___ (from the beginning) 38 Italian carmaker that partnered with Chrysler 39 Water-based tourist attraction in Rome 44 Emulated 45 Do a marathon 46 Go off ___ tangent 47 Banner team? 48 Stashed away 49 Loudly lament 52 Overdue 54 Tom Hiddleston's role in "Thor"
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Willamette Week Classifieds NOVEMBER 22, 2017 wweek.com
29 Part of MIT, for short 30 Do what you're doing right now 31 Broadway musical without a storyline 32 In conclusion, in Paris 33 Question for the stranded 34 Coatroom hangers, maybe 35 Prefix for sphere 36 Fiber source in cereals 40 "Can ___ you in on a little secret?" 41 Savoir-faire 42 Kid's wheels 43 IRS employee 48 Drivers' warnings 49 Took illegally 50 De-squeaked 51 Conquers 53 Forest hackers 54 Place for tumblers 56 "The ___ La La Song" (theme from "The Banana Splits") 57 Ocasek once of the Cars 59 ___ Tuesday (Aimee Mann's old band) 60 Be behind last week’s answers
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Week of November 23
ARIES (March 21-April 19):
I hope that everything doesn’t come too easily for you in the coming weeks. I’m worried you will meet with no obstructions and face no challenges. And that wouldn’t be good. It might weaken your willpower and cause your puzzle-solving skills to atrophy. Let me add a small caveat, however. It’s also true that right about now you deserve a whoosh of slack. I’d love for you to be able to relax and enjoy your well-deserved rewards. But on the other hand, I know you will soon receive an opportunity to boost yourself up to an even higher level of excellence and accomplishment. I want to be sure that when it comes, you are at peak strength and alertness.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20):
You were born with the potential to give the world specific gifts -- benefits and blessings that are unique to you. One of those gifts has been slow in developing. You’ve never been ready to confidently offer it in its fullness. In fact, if you have tried to bestow it in the past, it may have caused problems. But the good news is that in the coming months, this gift will finally be ripe. You’ll know how to deal crisply with the interesting responsibilities it asks you to take on. Here’s your homework: Get clear about what this gift is and what you will have to do to offer it in its fullness.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20):
Happy Unbirthday, Gemini! You’re halfway between your last birthday and your next. That means you’re free to experiment with being different from who you have imagined yourself to be and who other people expect you to be. Here are inspirational quotes to help you celebrate. 1. “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” - George Bernard Shaw. 2. “Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one’s mind.” - W. Somerset Maugham. 3. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson. 4. “The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.” - Friedrich Nietzsche.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22):
Here are themes I suggest you specialize in during the coming weeks. 1. How to gossip in ways that don’t diminish and damage your social network, but rather foster and enhance it. 2. How to be in three places at once without committing the mistake of being nowhere at all. 3. How to express precisely what you mean without losing your attractive mysteriousness. 4. How to be nosy and brash for fun and profit. 5. How to unite and harmonize the parts of yourself and your life that have been at odds with each other.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):
I predict that in the coming months you won’t feel compulsions to set your adversaries’ hair on fire. You won’t fantasize about robbing banks to raise the funds you need, nor will you be tempted to worship the devil. And the news just gets better. I expect that the amount of self-sabotage you commit will be close to zero. The monsters under your bed will go on a long sabbatical. Any lame excuses you have used in the past to justify bad behavior will melt away. And you’ll mostly avoid indulging in bouts of irrational and unwarranted anger. In conclusion, Scorpio, your life should be pretty evilfree for quite some time. What will you do with this prolonged outburst of grace? Use it wisely!
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):
“What is love?” asks philosopher Richard Smoley. “It’s come to have a greeting-card quality,” he mourns. “Half the time ‘loving’ someone is taken to mean nurturing a warmish feeling in the heart for them, which mysteriously evaporates the moment the person has some concrete need or irritates us.” One of your key assignments in the next ten months will be to purge any aspects of this shrunken and shriveled kind of love that may still be lurking in your beautiful soul. You are primed to cultivate an unprecedented new embodiment of mature, robust love.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19):
CANCER (June 21-July 22):
You know that unfinished task you have half-avoided, allowing it to stagnate? Soon you’ll be able to summon the gritty determination required to complete it. I suspect you’ll also be able to carry out the glorious rebirth you’ve been shy about climaxing. To gather the energy you need, reframe your perspective so that you can feel gratitude for the failure or demise that has made your glorious rebirth necessary and inevitable.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22):
In an ideal world, your work and your character would speak for themselves. You’d receive exactly the amount of recognition and appreciation you deserve. You wouldn’t have to devote as much intelligence to selling yourself as you did to developing your skills in the first place. But now forget everything I just said. During the next ten months, I predict that packaging and promoting yourself won’t be so #$@&%*! important. Your work and character WILL speak for themselves with more vigor and clarity than they have before.
I suggest that you take a piece of paper and write down a list of your biggest fears. Then call on the magical force within you that is bigger and smarter than your fears. Ask your deep sources of wisdom for the poised courage you need to keep those scary fantasies in their proper place. And what is their proper place? Not as the masters of your destiny, not as controlling agents that prevent you from living lustily, but rather as helpful guides that keep you from taking foolish risks. In his book Life: The Odds, Gregory Baer says that the odds you will marry a millionaire are not good: 215-to-1. They’re 60,000-to-1 that you’ll wed royalty and 88,000to-1 that you’ll date a model. After analyzing your astrological omens for the coming months, I suspect your chances of achieving these feats will be even lower than usual. That’s because you’re far more likely to cultivate synergetic and symbiotic relationships with people who enrich your soul and stimulate your imagination, but don’t necessarily pump up your ego. Instead of models and millionaires, you’re likely to connect with practical idealists, energetic creators, and emotionally intelligent people who’ve done work to transmute their own darkness.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22):
What might you do to take better care of yourself in 2018, Virgo? According to my reading of the astrological omens, this will be a fertile meditation for you to keep revisiting. Here’s a good place to start: Consider the possibility that you have a lot to learn about what makes your body operate at peak efficiency and what keeps your soul humming along with the sense that your life is interesting. Here’s another crucial task: Intensify your love for yourself. With that as a driving force, you’ll be led to discover the actions necessary to supercharge your health. P.S. Now is an ideal time to get this project underway.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18):
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20):
There used to be a booth at a Santa Cruz flea market called “Joseph Campbell’s Love Child.” It was named after the mythological scholar who wrote the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. The booth’s proprietor sold items that spurred one’s “heroic journey,” like talismans made to order and herbs that stimulated courage and mini-books with personalized advice based on one’s horoscope. “Chaos-Tamers” were also for sale. They were magic spells designed to help people manage the messes that crop up in one’s everyday routine while pursuing a heroic quest. Given the current astrological omens, Pisces, you would benefit from a place that sold items like these. Since none exists, do the next best thing: Aggressively drum up all the help and inspiration you need. You can and should be well-supported as you follow your dreams on your hero’s journey.
Homework Is there a belief you know you should live without, but don’t yet have the courage to leave behind? FreeWillAstrology.com. check out Rob Brezsny’s Expanded Weekly Audio Horoscopes & Daily Text Message Horoscopes
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