Willamette Week, March 23, 2022 - Volume 48, Issue 20 - "This is Portland's Funniest Person"

Comedian Bryan Bixby

“HEY, HOW COME MOM’S IN SUCH A GOOD MOOD?” P. 24 WWEEK.COM VOL 48/20 03. 2 3. 2 02 2

COPS: An Officer and a Yoga Instructor.

P. 6 NEWS: Urban Renewal in East Portland?

P. 8 FILM: Katie Nguyen vs.

Heckling Junk Mail.

P. 26

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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

WW is looking for a new Advertising Sales Director and Membership Manager!

Go to wweek.com/careers to learn more and apply.

FINDINGS CHRIS NESSETH

MARCH MADNESS, PAGE 18

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 48, ISSUE 20 In 1923, Portland was home to perhaps the largest Elks lodge in the nation. 4

Flight delay at PDX? Wait it out at a women in aviation-themed cocktail bar in Concourse E . 20

The Portland Police Bureau wants its officers to become yoga instructors. 6

For the first time since 2014, Oregon’s Dungeness crabbing season started on time. 21

Oregon hospitals would welcome any governor but Tina Kotek. 7

The fried mozzarella shot glasses at Gabbiano’s sell out nightly. 22

Hazelwood could be the new South Waterfront. 8

Local edible producer Laurie Wolf is known as the Martha Stewart of cannabis. 24

Dacia Grayber rides a Gazelle Medeo up Terwilliger Boulevard. 9 Riley McCarthy almost fought a Nazi at Plaid Pantry. 14

After being named Portland’s Funniest Person, Katie Nguyen made it to Hollywood. 26

Hey you two, get a ring!

717 SW 10th Ave Portland, OR 97205 503.223.4720 www.maloys.com

For fine antique and custom jewelry, or for repair work, come visit us, or shop online at Maloys.com. We also buy.

Seth Allen peed his pants on purpose. 16

ON THE COVER:

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Portland’s 2022 Funniest Person Bryan Bixby, photo

by Aaron Lee.

Sunnyside residents gave a cold reception to an all-boys religious school.

Masthead EDITOR & PUBLISHER ART DEPARTMENT

Mark Zusman

EDITORIAL

News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Andi Prewitt Assistant A&C Editor Bennett Campbell-Ferguson Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Sophie Peel, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

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DIALOGUE

• •••• ••••

A T R E A LRBO S ER E T •••• A E H T legendary Folk/Blues songwriter

MAR 23

CHRIS SMITHER blues guitar diva

MAR 24

ANA POPOVIC

JACKED01, VIA REDDIT: “I’m

MAR 26

MAR 25

Willamette Week’s

six string wonder

WILLY PORTER

+ Jenner Fox

MAR 27

MASTERS OF HAWAIIAN MUSIC

MAR 30

Espacio Flamenco presents

George Kahumoku, Jr. Sonny Lim Jeff Peterson

FALL IN LOVE WITH FLAMENCO

APR 1 + 2 Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon album performed in its entirety with aerial dance and all-star band

DARK SIDE

a piece for assorted lunatics feat. LOVE GIGANTIC

APR 6

THE GREATEST GENERATION

APR 7

SCIENCE ON TAP

APR 8

NPR radio show live taping

CECILY WONG GREGORY GOURDET NO-NO BOY

The Double Dumbass Tour

RISE UP

APR 9

The Music of Hamilton and Broadway

DIFFERENT

Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist

UPCOMING SHOWS

•••••••••••••

4/14 • ALAN DOYLE with CHRIS TRAPPER 4/6 • JESUS TOMMY SUPERSTAR: A ROCK OPERA SINGALONG MASHUP PRESENTED BY LOW BAR CHORALE

•••••

albertarosetheatre.com

3000 NE Alberta • 503.764.4131 4

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

Last week, WW analyzed the surprisingly decent chance Oregon Republicans have to win the governor’s race for the first time in 40 years (“Have You Herd?” March 16). That’s thanks to a perfect storm of unpopular Democratic policies, Betsy Johnson’s unaffiliated campaign, and a GOP floor that’s a little higher than Portland liberals like to believe. But a visit to a Republican forum in Salem last month was a reminder that any party nominee must also demonstrate fealty to former President Donald Trump and his refusal to admit he lost the last election. That’s a good way to alienate undecided voters, fast. Here’s what our readers had to say.

not a Republican, but this next election I’m most likely going to jump ship and see how the other half handles this shit show.”

AESTRO, VIA WWEEK.COM:

“Dennis Richardson touted the security and effectiveness of vote-by-mail and automatic registration just three years ago, as a Republican running the damned elections in Oregon.

Now these losers can’t even accept that they’ve ever lost an election.”

JACK BOGDANSKI, VIA BOJACK2.COM: “After the

last decade, I would never vote for a Republican for anything, ever, nor would I want to see that death cult succeed in any

race. But come on, could they actually take over, with Johnson pulling votes away from WW’s precious T. Kohoutek? I think Johnson might actually pull almost as many votes away from the unknown comic who emerges victorious from the current GOP governor-wannabe clown car. (Be careful in the car around the swinger guy, by the way.)

“My advice: If you vote for Betsy Johnson, you might get Betsy Johnson as governor.”

BOREGON, VIA REDDIT:

“Getting ‘tough on crime’ is something a lot of Portlanders could buy into, but restricting abortion and trashing the vote-by-mail system? Fuck that.

The Democratic Party is far

Dr. Know

from perfect, but the insanity of the Republican Party is still going to make voting for any of them a nonstarter for most Oregonians.”

GREAZYSTEAK, VIA REDDIT:

“Next thing WW is going tell me is that Ted Wheeler is going to be recalled.”

NOPO RESIDENT, VIA WEEK. COM: “Like most legacy media,

WW is desperate for the two-party swindle to continue.

“The real story is Johnson and the feeble candidates the Dems have to offer up. It’s why WW had such a big crush on Kristof.

Now they’re left with trying to make Kotek and Read seem human. Good luck with that.”

CORRECTION

Due to an editor’s error, last week’s story on psychedelics funding (“Mushroom Rush,” WW, March 16) incorrectly described Joe Green as investing in Oregon’s psilocybin market. He has funded a nonprofit that is heavily involved in Oregon’s psilocybin implementation process. WW regrets the error.

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

BY MARTY SMITH @martysmithxxx

I’m always amused by the inscription on a building at Southwest 11th and Alder. I don’t know my architectural lingo, but if you look up, you’ll see it: “DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD THEY SHOULD DO UNTO YOU.” I’d be interested to hear your take.

—Nancy H. For some reason, American architects in the early 20th century developed a mania for plastering deep-sounding mottoes across the architraves (I suspect that’s the word you were looking for) of public buildings.

The U.S. Supreme Court building, for example, got “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW.” The University of Texas Library got “YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE.” And New York’s (former) post office got that famous one that begins “NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN…” and goes on way too long (to be fair, it is a long building). For a few decades, inscriptions were everywhere.

Did Portland’s city fathers watch this linguistic frenzy and hastily choose the Golden Rule as the building’s slogan just to get it done before all the good mottoes were taken? (You can see why they’d be concerned—no city wants to be late to the party and wind up with a Palace of

Arts and Culture bearing the legend “TIGHT BUTTS DRIVE ME NUTS.”) But no, there’s a better explanation.

The building at 614 SW 11th Ave. currently comprises the west wing of the Sentinel Hotel, but it was originally built to house the Portland chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. At the time of its completion in 1923, the building was (probably) the largest Elks lodge in the country and hosted a local chapter of 3,800 members.

Of course, club rules at the time required all those members to be white and male, which doesn’t sound all that benevolent to me—but hey, it was a different time, right? You’ll be pleased to learn that the BPOE swiftly saw the error of their ways and repealed that discriminatory language—a scant 50 years later, in 1973.

(At least now we know what they were protective of.)

This history may make the Elks’ claim that their order is based on the Golden Rule ring a bit hollow (the fact that the whole thing started in the 1860s as “The Jolly Corks,” a social club for blackface performers, doesn’t help, either), but that’s the reason the inscription is there. Is it hypocritical? Probably. Is it more hypocritical than the inscription on the Supreme Court? Your call.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

MURMURS ALEX WITTWER

SEEMS LIKE ONLY YESTERDAY: A line of riot police tears down a flaming barricade to pursue protesters in September 2020.

INDIANA MAN TO PLEAD GUILTY TO THROWING MOLOTOV COCKTAILS AT PORTLAND POLICE: A 25-year-old Indiana man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails toward Portland police in the fall of 2020 is slated to plead guilty to charges in state and federal court next week, court records show.

Malik Muhammad faces 28 counts in Multnomah County, including attempted aggravated murder and unlawful manufacture and possession of a destructive device, as well as six counts in federal court of civil disorder, using an explosive to commit a felony, and unlawful possession of a destructive device. He is accused of handing out baseball bats—purchased at the McMinnville Goodwill—to protesters during multiple demonstrations. In a November 2021 court filing in Multnomah County Circuit Court, his attorney wrote: “Mr. Muhammad is a valued member of his community and an involved father. He is a military veteran with an honorable discharge in 2018.” Federal prosecutors allege that a search of Muhammad’s “travel trailer” in October 2020 yielded multiple firearms, including an AR-15 rifle. When detectives contacted the rifle’s owner, who lives in Indianapolis, he allegedly told them that Muhammad was “a communist revolutionary who was attempting to gather people with firearms to engage in acts of violence.”

KITZHABER ENDORSES READ: Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber this week became the second former governor to endorse State Treasurer Tobias Read in the Democratic primary for governor.

Former House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland) remains the favorite in the race, but Kitzhaber, like his predecessor, former Gov. Barbara Roberts, decided he’d rather see Read as his party’s standard bearer. “Bold, outcomes-based leadership, unfettered by the status quo, is what Oregon needs and what Tobias brings to this race,” Kitzhaber said. “I am proud to support him.” Kotek says the move is “sour grapes” because she called on Kitzhaber to resign in 2015. Also, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the state’s third-largest public employee union, said it won’t endorse either Democrat. Kotek previously got nods from Service Employees International Union and the Oregon Education Association.

KATU CANCELS GOVERNOR DEBATES: Portland television station KATU-TV came up with a screening process to limit the size of its scheduled candidate debates for the May 17 primary for governor—then caught so much flak that it canceled the events. The station, which is WW’s news partner, set a contribution threshold of $750,000, which would have winnowed the 19 GOP candidates to five: former House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R-Canby), Salem oncologist Dr. Bud Pierce, Sandy Mayor Stan Pulliam, former state Rep. Bob Tiernan (R-Lake Oswego), and political consultant Bridget Barton. The requirement would have narrowed the 15 Democrats down to just two: former House Speaker Tina Kotek and State Treasurer Tobias Read. Less well-financed candidates, led

by Democrat Patrick Starnes, a cabinetmaker from Brownsville, urged KATU to use different criteria, such as whether a candidate appears in the Voters’ Pamphlet, has a website and has generated media coverage. But on March 21, KATU instead pulled the plug, telling candidates in an email that “it will concentrate our efforts on a debate with the primary winners in the general election in the fall.”

GOLF CLUB HOSTING SAUDI-BACKED TOURNAMENT GETS BLOWBACK: Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains announced last week it would host a tournament held by LIV Golf, which is financially backed by the Saudi Arabian government. Now the private club is offering its members a chance to air any grievances from 10 am to 2 pm March 23 with staffers from the company that owns Pumpkin Ridge: Escalante Golf of Fort Worth, Texas. That’s according to a letter Pumpkin Ridge shared with members this week. A letter sent last week told members the club’s initiation fee would increase to $25,000 in order to “improve our facilities and support daily operations” and said to expect a membership fee increase as well. Many of the improvements are in preparation for the tournament. Listed enhancements before the event include repairs to cart paths, irrigation work, leveling of tees, an entire renovation of its grill and locker rooms, and new patio furniture.

sponsored by

April 6th Revolution Hall get tix > bit.ly/OBA2022 Presented by Willamette Week

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BRIAN BURK

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

FUNDING THE POLICE

Big Flex The Police Bureau says yoga training and in-house mental health counseling could ease retention and recruitment challenges.

BY T E S S R I S K I

tess@wweek .com

Nearly two years after a $15 million budget cut, the Portland Police Bureau is still struggling to hire new officers and retain current staff. PPB’s $254 million proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year would restore about $15.3 million to its operating budget—nearly the same amount cut two years ago.

That budget also includes an intriguing strategy to boost office morale: meditation workshops, in-house mental health counseling, and the opportunity to become a certified yoga coach while working at the bureau.

Amount requested: $915,000 in one-time funding.

What it’s for: Expanding PPB’s wellness program, established in 2018. Currently, bureau employees—sworn and non-sworn—are allotted one hour per workday for “individual wellness activities” to increase physical, mental, emotional, social and financial health.

In this proposal, $115,000 would be allocated to a coaching certification program whereby bureau staff could become certified trainers “in the areas of personal interest, such as meditation, fitness, nutrition, yoga, and personal finance,” according to budget documents. Once certified in a chosen area, the employee would become a “peer coach” who could offer “guidance and support” to colleagues based on that certification.

It’s an idea with some precedent: In 2016, Seattle radio station KUOW reported, for example, on a Hillsboro, Ore., police officer who began teaching his fellow officers yoga to help them respond more calmly to stressful encounters.

The one-time funding request also includes $660,000 for

cardiac screenings, $100,000 for an in-house mental health care provider, $15,000 for a “wellness library,” and $25,000 for in-service training in subjects like sleep health and mediation practice.

Why the bureau wants it: To boost morale and retain existing staff while also encouraging new hires. In its budget proposal, the Police Bureau often mentions its struggles to fill vacancies amid a wave of retirements and resignations.

“This strategy aims to serve as a retention tool for members that are burned out and considering leaving. This model will also benefit the bureau as a requirement incentive to apply over other agencies that are hiring,” PPB wrote in its budget request submission.

“This investment would strengthen and boost morale, improve customer service to all community members, and strengthen the ability to retain current employees and attract new applicants.”

The bureau added that the 2020 protests and the pandemic have made it “even more challenging to have employees who are thriving physically, mentally and emotionally.” In other words,

officers who get enough sleep and practice mindfulness habits like meditation might be less reactive and more sociable while on the job.

“This will lead to members who are mindful, emotionally intelligent, and better prepared to serve our community,” PPB wrote, “to ensure safety and protect the rights of all.”

What the budget office said: In its March 4 review of the Police Bureau’s budget, the City Budget Office recommended the mayor reject the funding request because the city’s general fund couldn’t afford it over other budget priorities.

Instead, the budget office suggested the police union foot the bill.

“CBO recommends the bureau continue to explore opportunities to leverage other resources to support the Wellness Program,” the budget office wrote, “such as the Portland Police Association Operating Insurance Fund which may be appropriate to address some of the identified needs.”

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

—Metro Council President Lynn Peterson

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M O T O YA N A K A M U R A / M U LT N O M A H C O U N T Y

“ What needs to happen is the mayor really needs to consider stepping away from this commission form of government, now.

He has the ability to do an emergency order, take the commission assignments away, take his own assignments away, and get a city manager now, and prove the concept that we can do better.”

DONOR ONE QUESTION

Should Portland Police Merge With the County Sheriff?

We asked candidates in the first contested sheriff’s race in over a decade.

Public safety is one of the top concerns of Portlanders heading into the May primaries, according to pollsters.

That ratchets up the intensity of what happens to be the first contested race for Multnomah County sheriff in more than a decade.

Unlike the Portland police chief, the Multnomah County sheriff is an elected position. And two agency insiders are vying to replace outgoing Sheriff Mike Reese: Undersheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell and Capt. Derrick Peterson of the corrections division, which manages the county’s jails.

Both candidates have turned decades of experience in the sheriff’s office into a wide range of endorsements, making a contested race even more competitive. (A third candidate, corrections deputy and former private security guard Nicholas Alberts, did not respond to WW’s inquiry. Alberts has not reported any fundraising to the state.)

The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office covers a much larger jurisdiction than the Portland Police Bureau, with a 280-square-mile patrol area (encompassing unincorporated portions of the county, Fairview, Troutdale and Gresham) and about 110 miles of waterways stretching from Sauvie Island and Scappoose to the Bonneville Dam in the Columbia River Gorge.

While its budget is separate from PPB’s, the two agencies have some overlap. (MCSO, for example,

assisted PPB during 2020 protests, and it has also rented space in the Police Bureau’s training facility.)

As protests continued into the fall of 2020, City Hall quietly discussed the possibility of consolidation after County Commissioner Sharon Meieran revived the idea.

Now, as the Police Bureau struggles to manage decreased staffing levels and increasing gun violence, we were curious to know how the candidates viewed the relationship between city and county law enforcement. T E S S R I S K I .

IN A MARCH 17 MEETING of the Portland Executives Association, Lynn Peterson made a remarkable suggestion: If Mayor Ted Wheeler wants Portland’s form of government to change, he should just go ahead and change it.

While not a household name, the PEA is one of several business guilds whose members are deeply disgruntled with crime, homeless camping, the appearance of downtown—where its CEO membership gathers for lunch—and the seeming inability of the Portland City Council to move quickly on any decision.

For years, public policy wonks have argued that the lethargy at City Hall isn’t due to any one official, but to a structural flaw.

Portland is the only large city in the nation that still uses a commission form of government, a system that often results in molasses-paced action by bureaus under the control of one of five city commissioners who guard

their fiefdoms from the threat of new ideas.

This fall, Portlanders will have a once-in-adecade chance to change the city’s form of government. The Charter Review Commission, a 20-member committee, is currently working on submitting recommendations to the City Attorney’s Office, which will draft initiatives for November’s ballot.

A recent poll shows strong support for switching to a government that does not task City Council members with managing individual bureaus but instead gives administrative duties to either a city manager or the mayor.

In audio obtained by WW, Peterson told the executives that November is a long way off: “All of that seems very far away, and too far away during a crisis.”

She argued that Wheeler should use his emergency powers to scrap the commission form of government and bring in a city

WW asked: In recent years, city and county officials have floated the idea of merging the Portland Police Bureau and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. In 200 words or less, would you support such a merger and, if so, what would that agency look like?

Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell: Collaboration is critical in public safety. The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office regularly partners with Portland police, offering assistance during emergency situations, coordinating on investigations, and addressing regionwide concerns like gun violence. MCSO’s responsibilities intersect with Portland and cover the entire county through our

work providing public safety services on TriMet, operating two jail facilities, patrolling 110 miles of waterway, serving civil process court orders, and providing courthouse security.

In addition, MCSO has vast responsibilities beyond Portland. MCSO provides policing services in unincorporated Multnomah County and the contract cities of Fairview, Maywood Park, Troutdale and Wood Village, and we have built long-standing positive relationships.

Proponents of a merger make some compelling arguments, including the idea that it would create direct accountability to the community through an elected sheriff. However, I’m not convinced that diverting MCSO’s already limited resources to a very complex merger process is the best approach.

The consolidation of Troutdale police with MCSO, a much smaller undertaking, took nearly four years.

That said, as sheriff, I would keep an open mind and listen to community and elected leaders’ innovative ideas aimed at improving public safety and community trust.

Derrick Peterson: Yes. With years of city and county law enforcement budget cuts, we are seeing a deterioration in public safety services. As we look to reform policing, and given the multitude of public safety crises in the county, to include major issues with hiring and retention in all agencies, leaders are at a crossroads where we must move beyond conversation and conjecture around the idea of consolidation of these two agencies.

Engaging the public on how they would like to be policed must be a major part of the equation when addressing the potential merger and should be incorporated into the merger plan. We do not have to start from scratch as the sheriff’s office has examples of successful mergers on a smaller scale with Troutdale and Fairview. I would support, at the very least, a partial/hybrid merger with a pathway to a full merger if we increased public safety, reduced cost, and gained efficiencies of Portland police while blending the people-focused approach of the sheriff’s office.

This initial partial merger would use a unified command approach that would initially be subject to specific special units performing similar work.

If this approach finds efficiencies, steps should be taken for a full merger.

manager, immediately. By doing so, Peterson said, Wheeler could demonstrate to voters that they would be better off making such a change permanent in the fall.

“The vast majority of citizens of this city want to see reform. And the sooner the better,” Peterson tells WW. “So all this would be doing would be accelerating one portion of the reform that the commission is looking at.”

In some ways, Peterson’s idea builds on what Wheeler is already doing. As WW reported this month (“Something Borrowed,” March 9), the mayor has used executive orders to bypass his fellow commissioners on homeless camping restrictions and shelter creation.

Mayoral spokesman Cody Bowman tells WW, “The Mayor fully supports the work of the Charter Review Commission and looks forward to hearing their recommendation.” S O P H I E

CONTRIBUTION OF THE WEEK HOW MUCH? $140,000 on March 10 WHO GOT IT? Three gubernatorial candidates: unaffiliated Betsy Johnson ($60,000), Democrat Tobias Read ($40,000) and Republican Christine Drazan ($40,000).

WHO GAVE IT? The Oregon Hospital Political Action Committee WHY DOES IT MATTER? What’s most notable is that the state’s hospitals—a powerful industry group—have chosen to donate to a slate of candidates in the governor’s race but not former House Speaker Tina Kotek (D-Portland), the presumptive front-runner in the Democratic primary and thus a serious contender for governor.

Instead, they’ve picked her leading opponent in the Democratic primary, a leading Republican, and the well-funded unaffiliated candidate.

The Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems declined to offer specifics why it had opted against Kotek and for a slate of her leading opponents—or to elaborate why it chose the particular candidates it did.

“Through a member-driven process, the OAHHS contributions demonstrate our support for the candidates we believe best reflect the values most important to Oregon’s hospitals,” says spokesman David Northfield.

WHAT DO THE CAMPAIGNS SAY? For years, Service Employees International Union, which represents some hospital workers, has battled the hospitals on compensation and charity care. Johnson’s campaign made a veiled argument that Kotek, a longtime SEIU ally, might have other interests in mind first.

“Betsy believes that hospitals deserve a governor who is willing to work with them, not against them,” says Johnson spokeswoman Jennifer Sitton.

Drazan’s campaign said the donation is a good sign.

“The association’s contribution is yet another sign that Christine is the strongest Republican candidate in this year’s election,” says Drazan campaign manager Trey Rosser.

Read declined to comment.

R AC H E L M O N A H A N .

PEEL.

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NEWS MICK HANGLAND-SKILL

I-84

NE Halsey St. H A Z E LW O O D

I-205

NE Glisan St.

SE Powell Blvd.

“I think it’s a bad mechanism that can’t be made better.”

CITY CENTER: A shopping plaza in Hazelwood.

Wagons East Prosper Portland has a chance to bring a new urban renewal area to East Portland—but must first convince a community it can be done differently than before.

BY S O P H I E P E E L

speel@wweek .com

For decades, 122nd Avenue has gone nowhere fast.

A drive down this north-south thoroughfare displays the effects of City Hall’s neglect of East Portland. The vista is dotted with used car dealerships, lottery delis and chain restaurants.

It’s one of the roads where Portlanders most frequently die in traffic and runs through the neighborhoods where they are most likely to be shot.

And it’s where the city’s economic development arm, Prosper Portland, is being offered a chance at renewed relevance and perhaps to revive its faltering finances.

Documents and interviews show East Portland community groups have sought and held preliminary conversations with Prosper Portland about launching a new tax increment financing district there, also known as an urban renewal area.

A map obtained by WW shows the area under consideration includes the East Portland neighborhoods of Hazelwood, Russell, Parkrose Heights, Maywood Park, Argay and Gateway, with 122nd Avenue running down the center.

Urban renewal is the same tool Prosper Portland (formerly known as the Portland Development Commission) used to create the Pearl District and South Waterfront, and to make way for a new light rail line through North Portland.

But it’s also a method many critics say has 8

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

done more harm than good. Urban renewal is now inextricably linked to the gentrification that exiled Portland’s poorest residents—many of them Black—to the city’s edges.

Places like 122nd Avenue.

“The legacy of [urban renewal areas] is displacement, gentrification, and creating neighborhoods that serve the next generation of folks coming in at the expense of folks already living there,” says Callie Riley, anti-displacement coalition manager for the racial justice nonprofit Unite Oregon. “In North and Northeast Portland, it’s been disruption and destruction of predominantly Black neighborhoods.”

That means Prosper’s discussions about renewing 122nd Avenue are delicate: The agency has met with affordable housing agencies, neighborhood associations, and social justice organizations—that is, the groups that largely represent the communities that have historically been displaced, gentrified and priced out of TIF districts starting back in the 1970s.

Prosper Portland says the conversations are being led by the community, and Prosper has “provided technical information as requested.”

“Should community interest and City Council support align, we would envision exploring a potential East PDX TIF district prioritizing anti-displacement and equitable development,” the agency tells WW. East Portland is in dire need of dollars from the city, which has underinvested there for decades.

Stakeholders see a TIF district as one way to get much-needed funding, but insist that urban renewal be done differently than before. And some East Portland residents remain deeply skeptical.

Nick Sauvie, executive director of the housing nonprofit Rose CDC, describes the feedback from stakeholders in a meeting last month as “all over the place.”

“Some people said they’d really like that, and there were some that were like, ‘Over my dead body,’” Sauvie says. “Prosper is going to put on a full-court press to get new areas to replace the expiring districts.” (Prosper says it’s merely responding to community interest.)

It might seem quaint now, given Portland’s recent struggles, but there was a time, not two decades ago, when the location and size of urban renewal areas were among the most hotly debated topics at City Hall.

Tax increment financing is a migraine-inducing topic, but the basic concept is this: Prosper draws a line around a neighborhood it considers blighted. It borrows against future property tax revenues in the district. For the next several decades, excess property taxes over the base revenue set when the district was formed stay in the neighborhood. Instead of going to the general fund, the tax dollars must be invested within the district.

Prosper gets a cut of the money raised by the TIF districts, but they have a limited lifetime.

That means the agency must find places it can start anew, or face running out of funds. (Prosper tells WW new TIF districts alone cannot solve the money problem “in the near term.”)

A receptive audience in East Portland could be a godsend for Prosper, which has struggled to create any other major revenue sources.

All of Prosper’s 10 remaining districts are close to sunsetting. The last time Prosper launched a new urban renewal area was in 2001.

The City Budget Office called the sunsetting of districts and debt proceeds—expected to reach zero in 2025—the “TIF Cliff” in a recent budget document.

Prosper Portland, once the swashbuckling envy of other city bureaus, currently has 87 employees, a 60% decrease from 2009.

In short, Prosper is in danger of disappearing.

In 2017, the agency laid out a new funding blueprint to stay afloat, with an emphasis on generating income from real estate. But some of its biggest development projects since then— including the 14-acre post office site, which is part of the larger Broadway Corridor, and Zidell Yards along the South Waterfront—have all fallen through.

The interest expressed by East Portland stakeholders in a new TIF district should be welcome news.

“There is very early interest for exploring an East PDX TIF district, and primarily these are community-led conversations that we’ve only just started engaging in,” says Shea Flaherty Betin, Prosper’s director of economic development.

The boundaries of such a district are not yet clear. Hazelwood is smack dab in the middle, but the circle also contains parts of several other neighborhoods in Northeast and Southeast (see map left).

Gateway Regional Center and Lents Town Center, Prosper’s two previous East Portland urban renewal areas, have received mixed reviews.

A 2020 city audit of the Lents district chastised Prosper for not tracking its progress more closely, and found that property values there rose drastically while BIPOC homeownership dropped.

Potential stakeholders in East Portland want to have a strong say in which projects would receive funds in the district, a point that could cause tension down the line.

Andy Miller, director of the affordable housing nonprofit Human Solutions, says Prosper has a chance to demonstrate it’s a changed agency.

“We’d like to see them prove that,” Miller says, “by delivering on the next set of TIF districts to ensure that the power of decision making is held by the people who have historically least benefited from their decisions.”

Similarly, Duncan Hwang of the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon says his nonprofit is “open to having that conversation” with Prosper if community groups have a strong say in what gets funded.

They’re partly looking to an initiative between Prosper and community groups in the Cully neighborhood as a new model to emulate: Groups there have led a plan for a larger TIF district in Cully for four years now, emphasizing the community’s input. (Any TIF district must ultimately be approved first by Prosper’s board and then the City Council.)

Others, like Riley of Unite Oregon, think urban renewal districts should be a thing of the past: “I think it’s a bad mechanism that can’t be made better.”

For Sabrina Wilson, executive director of the Rosewood Initiative, a community resource center, the preliminary question before more robust discussion starts is simple: Can Prosper and East Portland come to an agreement about who should benefit from the district?

“First we need to talk about what issues we’re looking to improve in East Portland as a whole,” Wilson says. “If TIF doesn’t address the concerns we have, we shouldn’t put our energy there.”

NEWS

PEDAL POWER: Dacia Grayber (left) PHOTO: Caption tktktk and Karin Power both own e-bikes.

She-Bikers’ Roundtable Gas prices are up and so are rides on e-bikes.

We asked two lawmakers why they converted.

BY R AC H E L M O N A H A N

rmonahan@wweek .com

Earlier this month, Rep. Dacia Grayber (D-Tigard) took to social media to announce her latest joy: She had bought an electric bicycle—a Gazelle Medeo, to be exact. Grayber, a first-term state representative, declared herself a “shEbiker.”

She’s at least the third woman in the Oregon House to own an e-bike, after Rep. Karin Power (D-Milwaukie), who has a Tern GSD, a cargo bike with child-seating capacity, and Rep. Barbara Smith Warner (D-Portland). (The e-bike caucus will be shortlived: Neither Smith Warner nor Power will seek reelection this year.)

WW spotted the trend early, reporting in a 2019 cover story that electric bikes were becoming a transportation favorite for environmentally conscious Portland moms—including this reporter (“Your Next Car Is an E-Bike,” Oct. 16, 2019).

Now there’s an economic incentive: Grayber’s purchase comes at a time when gas prices have risen by more than a dollar in the past year to above $4.75 for a gallon of regular in Portland.

The Portland Bureau of Transportation says it’s too early to say whether higher gas prices have inspired more cycling.

Some early data shows Portlanders are looking for alternatives: The number of e-scooter and Biketown e-bike rides doubled in February compared with the same month last year.

Oregon has long since passed the point where the climate apocalypse feels distant. But many Oregonians still resent cyclists as privileged, and even Portland roads aren’t built to help cars share the right of way (let alone SUVs and oversize pickups).

The two lawmakers are looking to incentivize e-biking through legislation. In the meantime, WW asked Grayber and Power about the joys and irritations of their commutes.

WW: How far do you usually e-bike?

Dacia Grayber: In my first week of owning the bike, I put about 100 miles on it, and was trying to find the limits of the battery. I’m riding it about 30 to 40 miles a week currently—to meetings and appointments, and using it for grocery runs.

Karin Power: Our kindergartner goes to Oregon City School District’s Spanish immersion program in Jennings Lodge, and our youngest goes to day care in Sellwood.

It’s a 13-mile, round-trip loop for us in the morning. We ride along the Trolley Trail nearly the whole way, and it’s so much fun.

Have you ditched your car?

Grayber: I haven’t yet tried out my commute to being on shift as a firefighter, which is 26 miles. I have to figure out a reasonably safe route that parallels Highways 217 and 26. But I’m almost exclusively using the e-bike for any days I’m not on shift. When I bought the bike, I made a commitment to trying to reduce my driving by half—especially city driving.

Power: We have had to have two cars because of my Salem commute. When I’m working from home for my primary job, the e-bike allows me to use our 13-year-old Subaru a lot less.

What do you like best about e-bikes?

Grayber: As my teenage daughter would say, “It’s a whole mood.”

I love it. It’s all the freedom and joy of regular biking, but I show up at my meetings dressed for business and I haven’t really broken a sweat. Waterproof mascara is clutch, though!

Also, I have spent years being passed by Team Shiny Spandex going up and over Terwilliger, and on that first day when I blazed by a few of these guys while I was wearing jeans, boots and a blazer, not gonna lie, I was a little giddy.

Power: It’s made such a positive impact on my kids’ behavior.

Grady loves the quiet time in the morning, listening to the birds, saying hello to other people biking or walking, and noticing our favorite trees. He says it helps him feel more calm as he gets to school in the morning. Finn loves dogs and says “woof woof” every time we pass one on the trails.

“It’s all the freedom and joy of regular biking, but I show up at my meetings dressed for business and I haven’t really broken a sweat.”

What annoys you most?

Grayber: I live in Southwest Portland, and we have dismal—I mean dismal—bike and pedestrian access in most places. Getting out of where I live is about a mile of Mad Max role play, but at least I have an e-boost now for the hills and curves with no shoulder and blackberries.

Power: When I’m in Sellwood, even though I get off my bike to walk it across Southeast 17th, hardly anyone stops for bikes or pedestrians. It’s a lot of through traffic driving too quickly, and it drives me nuts.

Is buying an e-bike a privileged transportation choice?

Grayber: Sure, but so is driving. I recognize the privilege I have to be able to buy an e-bike, but I also was grateful to be able to secure a 0% short-term loan to make it doable. I certainly didn’t have the cash to fork over up front. It’s a cup of coffee and breakfast sandwich a day for one year, if we’re breaking down actual cost—but then it’s paid off. That’s one of the things I want to work on next session: championing affordable access to everyone, especially those for whom having a mode of transportation like this could be a total game changer.

Power: It is a privilege to be able to spend time in the weather and the seasons with my kids on our bike. My mom lost her mobility when I was 5 in an accident, so I don’t take being able to cycle for granted.

What changes to the road and policy would help more people, maybe particularly women, e-bike?

Grayber: Infrastructure that values healthier modes of transportation and helps us move more safely. I’m not trying to bike on I-5; I’m trying to cross town safely without feeling like I’m doing battle. I’m going to continue to advocate strongly for this in the Legislature on a state level and with our federal partners.

Also, for the love of God, somebody please sweep city bike lanes (Barbur in particular is bad right now). My bike has pretty wide and tough tires, but there’s enough glass and debris to give a car a flat in some spots.

Power: Two things made a big difference for me: First, confidence that I know where I’m going and where the bike routes are, and second, being able to afford to buy an e-bike so I could get my kids around without needing a car.

We learned through Southeast Portland’s Splendid Cycles that Unitus Community Credit Union offers a bike loan financing option, which allows us to pay a small amount of interest to pay back the bike over a few years—similar to a car loan. When I’m driving the Subaru full time, we probably spend $200 a month on gas. So not only does the e-bike help me get some exercise and appreciate our community more, it also saves us money.

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

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The Funniest 5 These are the five funniest standup comedians in Portland, as selected by their peers.

P H OTOS BY AA R O N L E E

I

S

T H I S T H I N G O N ? A B S O LU T E LY. Comedy lives, and so does Funniest Five, our annual poll in which members of Portland’s comedy community vote for the funniest among them. Ballots are cast by comedians, bookers, improvisers, podcasters and promoters.

This year’s Funniest Five winners reflect the tension between darkness and light that is so central to standup.

Winner Bryan Bixby (page 12) delights in discomfort—one of his most memorable jokes is about watching incest porn—while the buoyancy of runner-up Riley McCarthy (page 14) brings levity to even the most unnerving anecdotes from his life, like a confrontation with a skinhead at a Plaid Pantry.

Each of the Five has had his headline-worthy moment. Jaren George (page 15) gave an audience Kit Kat bars! Seth Allen (page 16) deliberately wet his pants! Noah Watson (page 17) got his start joking about bestiality! These comics may differ in style, but they all enjoy testing the boundary between chuckling and squirming.

Another thing they have in common—they’re all men, which is why it’s important to note that this list is not definitive.

The results reflect the opinions of the diverse group of more 100 comedy insiders who were polled, but they don’t reflect the diversity of the Portland comedy community itself. That’s why we’ve put together a list of ongoing comedy showcases worth seeking out (page 13), many of which will introduce you to a

variety of voices you may not have heard.

Standup is among the most subjective of all art forms. A joke that makes one person chortle may leave another person seething at the comedian and furious at themselves for secretly laughing.

Yet in the case of this year’s Funniest Five, one thing is beyond question—their commitment to their craft and their willingness to emotionally expose themselves for our entertainment. It’s a terrifying job, but someone has to do it.

But you can see for yourself. All Five will perform this Saturday at the Funniest Five Showcase, hosted by Katie Nguyen, last year’s Funniest Person. See you there. —Bennett Campbell Ferguson, Assistant Arts & Culture Editor Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

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1.

“I was always a huge fan of sort of provocative comedy and things that were maybe inappropriate….”

W I L L A M E T T E W E E K ’ S F U N N I E S T F I V E S H OWC A S E AT T H E A L B E R TA R O S E T H E AT R E 8 P M SAT U R DAY, M A R C H 2 6 . $ 1 5 - $ 2 8 .

G O TO A L B E R TA R O S E T H E AT R E .CO M FO R TI C K E T S .

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Bryan Bixby Crosses the Line DURING A SHOW AT HARVEY’S COMEDY CLUB, Bryan Bixby joked that he hates people who are in shape so much that he understands why joggers get murdered. Afterwards, he was confronted by an angry audience member.

“This guy saw me outside and he was like, ‘That was really messed up. My friend was murdered on Thursday,’” Bixby recalls. “And this was a Saturday show.”

The exchange might have left some comedians feeling contrite. Not Bixby, who is an ardent believer in saying the unsayable for the sake of catharsis.

“I don’t want to be gross or be awful or anything like that,” he says. “The point is to make bad things a little bit better.”

Making bad things better is Bixby’s life’s work. No subject—his body, his family, his love life—is off-limits. He twists heartbreak and humiliation into entertainment so naturally and forcefully that, at times, it’s hard to believe his claim that he’s not a confident person.

“I think everybody has a lot of the same insecurities and fears,” he says. “It’s just, being confident is not giving into that in the moment, which is how I can go onstage and come off as a pretty confident presence, even though I’m really not that at all.”

Bixby is a master of soliciting multiple reactions simultaneously. In mere moments, he can make you go from “ew!” to “aw!,” like when he does a bit about watching incest porn.

“Not for the sex—I just like to fantasize being in a different family,” he quipped at Helium Comedy Club’s 2019 Funniest Person contest. “Like, ‘Aw, both parents are there!

What a lovely Christmas!’”

Bixby’s comedic dexterity dates back to his childhood in La Farge, Wis., which was a target of his standup routine at Helium: “I recently witnessed something very racist.

I was visiting my hometown in Wisconsin. And that was it! It was fucked up.”

As a child, Bixby wasn’t just funny—he was a provocateur.

While he dug the physical comedy of Jim Carrey and the Three Stooges, words were his weapons of choice.

“I was always a huge fan of sort of provocative comedy and things that were maybe inappropriate—making people laugh at things where it feels wrong or they’re disgusted, but they can’t help but laugh,” he says. “Even when I was in school, I remember once a teacher told my dad, ‘Bryan says a lot of inappropriate things for school, but sometimes it’s just so funny I can’t help but laugh.’”

At 15, Bixby did his first standup set—at his high school.

“I had to submit a full script of all the jokes I wanted to do to the principal to get her approval on it, and I think all but like three or four jokes were rejected,” he says. “I was

just thinking how far back it goes, that sort of crossing the line.”

Portland has provided Bixby with plenty of opportunities to cross the line. Case in point: his appearance at Comic Strip, a Funhouse Lounge event that invited comedians to perform wearing as few articles of clothing as they pleased.

“I wore two pairs of boxers and the bottom pair had a giant hole on the underside,” Bixby says. After removing the first pair, he “sat on a stool and let my balls drop out the hole and did a joke about manspreading. But that’s as far as I went.”

When Bixby talks about performing at Comic Strip, he speaks with reverence. “It was really cathartic and just felt really freeing and good,” he says. “You have nightmares of showing up in class and realizing you’re naked. Once you’re to that point, ‘It’s like, what could go wrong from here?’”

Bixby sometimes satirizes current events—go to his Instagram page and you’ll find gags about gas prices, Russian vodka and the Winter Olympics. Yet his most memorable jokes are the ones that dig into his psyche, transforming pain into art.

“Last year, I went through a breakup, and by the next` day, I was trying to write jokes to process it,” he says. “I was doing a lot of that material to work through it all.

When something like that happens, there’s a moment of just feeling sorry for myself, those negative feelings, and then I try to right away go into like, ‘What’s kind of funny about this?’”

There’s a dash of poetic license in Bixby’s material about his breakup—it didn’t actually occur on a tandem bike—but the anguish behind it is real. And there are other traumas featured in his routines, like his great-grandmother telling him he was “too fat” when he was 10 years old (right before she died).

“At the time, it hurt my feelings,” Bixby says. “But now, I look at those like, however much it hurts or makes me feel embarrassed, it’s all worth it if I can write a joke.”

Maybe that’s why Bixby cops to feeling extraordinarily comfortable onstage. Out of the spotlight, life is unpredictable and cruel. He can’t control an audience’s reaction to his material, but when he faces a crowd, he gains power from each story he tells—including the ones that have hurt him.

“It’s weird,” he says. “Onstage is the place that I feel the most comfortable. If I’m onstage and people are laughing, then nothing makes me uncomfortable, really. It’s the one time that I don’t feel any of that.”

BY B E N N E T T CAM PB E LL FE RG USO N @thobennett

Beyond the Funniest Five: Nine Comedy Showcases to Check Out The Comedy Corral Julia Corral, whose many talents include being a master of high school reunion jokes, hosts this comedy extravaganza on two Thursdays each month. It’s so popular that Kate Willett (of Comedy Central, Netflix and Late Show fame) stopped by one time. This Thursday, the lineup includes this year’s Funniest Five winner, Bryan Bixby. The Lay Low Tavern, 6015 SE Powell Blvd., 503-774-4645, instagram.com/thecomedycorral. Next show 9 pm Thursday, March 24. Free.

Comedy: The Musical Hosted by Chelsea Burns and 2022 Funniest Five honoree Jaren George, Comedy: The Musical mixes standup and musical theater to create an unconventional, irresistible subgenre. On the first and third Saturday of every month comedians tell jokes, improvisers riff on them in witty songs, and the audience goes along for the whole strange and wonderful ride. Their next show is the enticingly titled Comedy: The Musical ~ 80’s Hair Metal Edition.

Cruzroom, 2314 NE Alberta St., 503-724-1581, facebook.com/ comedythemusical. Next show 8 pm Saturday, March 26. $5.

Cruz Control Comedy Rachelle Cochran isn’t just a host—she’s a rapper, singer, songwriter and model. Cruz Control Comedy, which she hosts with Rob Robbie, is your chance to see her in standup mode every Thursday. Cruzroom, 2314 NE Alberta St., 503-724-1581, facebook.com/comedythemusical. Next show 7:30 pm Thursday, March 24. Free.

Dark Web Tonight Billed as “a standup variety show from the black heart of the internet,” Dark Web Tonight is hosted on the third Friday of the month by 2019’s Funniest Five winner, Ben Harkins, along with co-hosts Calaix and Noah Watson. You definitely can’t accuse them of lacking material. Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., 503-841-6734, funhouselounge.com/dark-web-tonight. Next show 10 pm Friday, April 15. $5.

Dough Pitched as a party-style approach to standup, Dough is hosted every Wednesday by Lance Edward, Thomas Lundy, Adam Pasi and Jake Silberman at (fittingly) Mississippi Pizza, which, incidentally, offers some of the most deliciously doughy breadsticks in Portland. Mississippi Pizza, 3552 N Mississippi Ave., 503-288-3231, mississippipizza.com. Next show 8 pm Wednesday, March 23.

Funny Jazz Talk Another clever music-comedy combo pack. Every last Saturday of the month, Ross Passeck and James Hartenfeld host, serving up a mixture of standup, improv and more, all of it backed up by a live jazz band(!). Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., 503-8416734, funhouselounge.com/funny-jazz-talk. Next show 10 pm Saturday, March 26. $10.

It’s Gonna Be Okay For eight years, It’s Gonna Be Okay has made its home in the basement of Eastburn. It’s still going strong, with Lewis Sequiera hosting each Monday, (Also, Eastburn hosts an open mic every Wednesday.) Eastburn, 1800 E Burnside St., 503-236-2876, theeastburn.com. Next show 8 pm Monday, March 28. Free.

Sorry Not Sorry Eliza Butler, Julia Corral and Marietje Hauprich host this women’s and POC-centric showcase every second Saturday. The April lineup will be headlined by Amanda Arnold and feature Jane Malone, Scott II and Madeline Moore. Leikam Brewing, 5812 E Burnside St., 503-477-4743, instagram.com/notsorryshow. Next show 8 pm Saturday, April 9. Free.

The Teacher Show: Comedy From the Classroom Aside from being comics, what do Katie Nguyen, Rachel Aflleje, Todd Basil, Amanda Lynn Deal and Jaren George have in common? They’re all teachers! And they’re all part of The Teacher Show, hosted by veteran Grant High School teacher Don Gavitte.

Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark St., #203, 971-808-5094, revolutionhall.com. Next shows 7:30 pm Saturday, April 9 and 30. $15.

BY B E N N E T T CAM PB E LL FE RG USO N @thobennett

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

13

“There’s a difference between having a dark setup and a dark punchline.”

2.

Riley McCarthy Doesn’t Do Snark IN 2018, RILEY MCCARTHY DECIDED to use his stage time at Helium Comedy Club to joke about Nazi hierarchy. Namely, skinheads being required to attack an immigrant, Jew, person of color or queer person in order to “earn” a pair of red shoelaces indicating their rank.

Hang on. Stay with him.

“These bigoted homophobic assholes are showing their pride in their lifestyle with a piece of colorful flair,” McCarthy, a wide-eyed, moppy-haired whirlwind, said in his set, charging across the stage. “I’m sorry—that’s gay as shit, my dude! Are you honestly going to try to appropriate pizazz from the queer community?” (McCarthy identifies as bisexual.)

After watching the performance, it was surprising to hear McCarthy describe his own taste in comedy as “optimistic” in a March 10 interview with WW. He explained that he doesn’t tend to find dark humor all that funny.

“I find whimsical stuff makes me laugh the most. Silly stuff,” he says.

So what’s with the Nazi jokes?

“There’s a difference,” he says, “between having a dark setup and a dark punchline.”

Even when McCarthy is tackling bigotry, politics or his own mental health, darkness is never really integral to the point of the joke. Instead, it’s almost incidental—casually intersecting with the punchline, which is usually madcap, personal and, yes, even whimsical.

“I think people find that really rewarding as a viewer of a joke—setting up that kind

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of tension of something intense or evocative and seeing it kind of made human,” he says.

Like the time he almost got into a fight with a red-laced Nazi at Plaid Pantry (“I should probably mention that this guy was about 5 foot 1…he was one of those mini-bigots. Biglets, as I like to call them”). Or the time he conned a Starbucks barista into assuming he was a doctor at a nearby psychiatric hospital, not a patient (“I had to lie. I had to! It was the quickest I’d ever gotten a promotion!”).

Because even when he leans into a bit of darkness, McCarthy doesn’t do snark. It’s just not his style.

The process of developing his comedic voice began in childhood, when his dad would bring home comedy albums. McCarthy’s first obsession was Steve Martin. He started listening to Mike Birbiglia, Emo Philips and Mitch Hedberg as he entered his teen years.

They have drastically different formats—Martin delivered off-kilter non sequiturs, Birbiglia was a classic storyteller, Philips would fidget and rant, and Hedberg thrived on deadpan one-liners—but at the core of each act was an utter lack of cynicism.

Like his idols, McCarthy is sincere in his silliness. His borderline-manic performing style is most comparable to Philips.

McCarthy tried to write one-liners at the start of his career, à la Hedberg, but found he just didn’t have the knack for it.

“I just can’t fucking do that form,” he says. “It’s like math. You have to be really smart [with] your syntax.”

When it comes to the content of his jokes, Birbiglia’s influence is most apparent. McCarthy also likes to tell a story, taking the audience along on a singular drawn-out adventure over the course of a 10-minute set.

“The hard part in figuring out and developing a storytelling joke is kind of figuring out what the thesis is. I think there has to be something relatable at the base of a storytelling joke for it to work, and I don’t always know what that is when I’m writing it,” he says, adding that he usually doesn’t figure out what’s funny about a punchline until he finally performs it live.

In that way, his writing process is a continuous collaboration between himself and the audience: “Write a draft, perform it, see what’s hitting, throw everything out that I just wrote, and rewrite it around what got a laugh.”

It worked great up until almost exactly two years ago. For McCarthy, who relies on a constant feedback loop, the pandemic proved catastrophic. Trying to do comedy over Zoom was a nightmare—he found he could barely hold a natural one-on-one conversation, let alone read the room during a set.

“It was very disheartening in quarantine,” he says. “It was kind of a maddening process. I’d be writing something and developing it, but there’s only so much I can do before the idea has to be walked out the door and shown.”

Despite the intermission. McCarthy worked on other creative projects, like Riley Paints His Friends, a Twitch series that depicts him interviewing his guests as he paints their portraits.

And he did eventually return to in-person shows. In 2021, he was named runner-up at Portland’s Funniest Person, a contest hosted by Helium Comedy Club. In the meantime, he says, he’s excited to debut new material onstage for Funniest Five.

“I’ve always tended toward earnestness,” he says. “But I think the pandemic, and the trauma of that, really formed that into kind of a core value for me. It sounds cheesy, but I feel like compassion has come into the foreground of my comedic voice.”

BY CALLE Y HAI R calleynhair@gmail .com

3.

Jaren George Is Still an Optimist JAREN GEORGE HAS A JOKE about how white Portlanders keep calling him “a beautiful Black man.” These strangers are well-meaning, he infers, but in an unsettling, micro-aggressive, I-noticed-you’re-Black kind of way.

The bit mostly generates knowing laughs at shows, a standout in George’s act that regularly touches on being a Black comedian in a largely white city and comedy scene.

And it fits in easily around self-aware material about his slight build (stop offering him granola bars) and sounding like the only Black kid at a Jewish summer camp (George’s New York accent remains.)

But then there’s that portion of the audience that likes his “beautiful Black man” joke but doesn’t fully get it. They’re the ones who come up after shows and reiterate that he’s “a beautiful Black man” or grab his arm to tell him they’re “so proud.”

“Do they mean it? I don’t know,” George says. “Actions show me otherwise! But they’re smiling at me. So it’s a lot. The point [of that joke] was that you don’t have to do it.”

If the irony is lost on some, maybe it’s George’s exuberant, endearing stage presence that dupes them. Even sarcasm comes off as a little bubbly from George, who took up comedy shortly after moving to Portland in 2013. After all, he maintains a very earnest core mission behind his standup.

“I really want to cheer people up,” he says. “Comedy! I’m here.

Let’s do it.”

Case in point, one of George’s earliest memories of joke-cracking occurred when visiting an aunt in Deltona, Fla., at age 8. When his aunt’s ex-boyfriend turned up drunk in the night and started smashing up the kitchen, young Jaren engaged in a silent round of the board game Trouble with his mom and cousin, trying to remain unnoticed in the bedroom. They had no problems staying quiet until George cracked up the group.

“I wanted to break the tension,” he remembers. “You just keep hearing the bobble, the little [Pop-O-Matic]. I remember just saying, ‘Good thing we’re playing this game. We are in trouble.’”

Comedy as a universal pick-me-up is reflected in George’s OPTIMISM! Comedy Showcase, which he hosts monthly. It’s named after a decade-old New York City MetroCard still stuck on George’s electric guitar (right next to a decal from George’s favorite band, The Thermals). The 35-year-old comic can’t remember why the NYC subway was branding its cards with random messages of positivity, but the idea “stuck” with him.

“Maybe 1 in 10 [riders] were depressed at the time,” he laughs.

As much as George savors making comics and patrons feel welcome while hosting showcases, he’s also willing to share and even exit the spotlight on his weekly improv podcast The IT Desk, which launched last March. Inspired by his day job in tech support and customer interactions that sometimes verged on emotional breakdowns, the podcast’s premise is always the same.

Two comics, often from the Pacific Northwest, improvise on a blind Zoom call, one playing the IT expert, the other a disgruntled customer. In the episode’s second half, George joins them for a debrief, and the comics guess each other’s identity. George compares the show to a mix of Crank Yankers and Comedy Bang!

Bang!, but with a precise hook.

In addition to lampooning customer service nightmares, the podcast offers George and his guests a forum to hone their hosting chops and improv, respectively. Ultimately, refining a craft was the reason George picked up comedy in the first place nine years ago, long before he became a scene stalwart, toured the East Coast and landed a background role on Shrill.

“When I started doing comedy, I wanted to get better at public speaking,” he says.

A self-admitted overtalker as a kid, George has worked to pare down his act from early narrative rambles, maximizing his jokesper-minute rate. He’s looked up to Portland standup luminaries like Amy Miller and Baron Vaughn through the years, cutting the fat from his sets to reach their absolute essentials. Kind of like George’s favorite candy, Kit Kat, which seems to continue breaking off into his routines.

In one opener, George compares himself to a single Kit Kat stick. In another, he dispenses Kit Kats to the audience at an Oprah-esque volume, only to take them back for his dinner.

(Once or twice, they’ve been eaten by the second half of that gag.) There’s a kinship between George’s act and his candy—or prop—of choice. Simple recipe. Big crunch, no fuss.

“I don’t like Skittles or fruit candies; I despise mint chocolate,” he says. “The Kit Kat is basic. Let’s get down to it.”

BY CHAN CE SO LE M - PFE I FE R @chance _ s _ p

“I really want to cheer people up.

Comedy! I’m here.

Let’s do it.”

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4.

Seth Allen Doesn’t Use Comedy as Therapy RIGHT BEFORE THE PANDEMIC blew up life as we knew it, Seth Allen was bombing.

It was unheard of for the now-37-year-old comic to get through an entire show without a single laugh, but it was impressive that he completed his scheduled sets at a 2020 Iowa comedy festival at all, considering the circumstances.

“I went out with some much younger comics the night before and tried to drink with them,” Allen says. “I was sick and dead all the next day. That was the last comedy memory before [COVID].”

He had hoped to quickly wipe the experience from his mind by telling jokes without a hangover, but that would have to wait. As the coronavirus began to spread across the U.S., venues went dark.

“Before I started doing comedy—my wife would validate this—I was a much more miserable person. I was grumpy, moody, very needy,” Allen explains, drawing out the “e” sound for emphasis. “I did feel myself slipping back into kind of a worse mental state like I was before doing comedy.”

Now that all local pandemic restrictions have been lifted, the native Oregonian is booking shows at an accelerating clip, which sometimes has him performing late into the evening every other day of the week at venues as far away as Salem right now, with more to come this summer in northern Washington.

Based on Allen’s jokes alone, you’d never guess he used to struggle with anxiety and depression. His sets gleefully bounce from subjects like Cheez-It hogging to messing

with his wife’s jigsaw puzzles to getting attacked by a crow.

Onstage, Allen leads you through personal scenarios with a mixture of innocence, bewilderment and mischievousness. It’s a character developed over time that he articulately describes as the “surprised participant.”

“In most of my stories, I’m there,” he explains. “It’s a surprise to me, and the more surprised I am to be in the situation, and the deeper my participation is in whatever is happening, the funnier it becomes for people.”

Allen’s 11-year marriage is the basis for some of his most memorable tales, since he mines the differences between him and his wife (she’s Black, he’s white; she’s from New York City, he grew up in Yamhill; she’s 10 years his senior) for humor.

“It surprises people that we’re together because of our personalities, because of our race,” he says casually in one bit. After a brief pause, he swivels his head upward and makes a full sweep of the crowd, unleashing, “But it’s really, like, when she calls me the N-word in public—that’s when it really shocks people.”

Other than being known as a class clown in school—examples of his antics include responding to a teacher using only verses from famous country songs and peeing his pants on purpose to help his friend get elected treasurer—Allen was never one to rile people up before he tried comedy.

In fact, at the University of Minnesota, he earned a master’s degree in human resources, and he’s worked in the field ever since, which is a bit ironic given the job’s decidedly humorless portrayal in popular media.

“I pursued it, hard,” Allen laughs. “I’ve always been a very security-seeking personality.”

Allen finally gave himself permission to give standup a shot one day before turning 30. He got heckled at an open mic at the now-shuttered Boiler Room, but while decompressing at a nearby pizzeria after the show, he realized that he was hooked.

“Sitting at the table, I was excited, but I was kind of scared, because I was like, ‘I’m going to keep doing this,’” he says. “I’m not a confident person in most things, but for standup I felt like I could figure it out.”

Turns out, his instinct was right. Just don’t call standup his form of personal therapy.

“There was a basketball player who was an alcoholic, and he replaced [drinking] with basketball and got really good,” Allen says. “But he’s still an addict. I wouldn’t say therapy, because I haven’t healed anything. I’ve just moved it somewhere else successfully.”

BY AN DI PR E WIT T aprewitt@w week .com

“I’m not a confident person in most things, but for standup I felt like I could figure it out.”

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“I grew up conservative and Christian, so I think the stuff I wasn’t supposed to be listening to was the funniest stuff that got to me.”

5.

Noah Watson Knows What You’re Thinking IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING: No, Noah Watson’s parents have not seen the bit he does about them having sex. He’d rather you not mention it to them.

Watson’s first time onstage doing comedy was in high school for a final project for an English class. It went well, but he wouldn’t perform again for years. Not because he didn’t want to. He just didn’t know how to go about it, and the only place for standup was a nearby theater where comics “wore checked yellow suits and big plastic flowers” and did Caitlyn Jenner jokes.

“I didn’t want to do that at all,” he says at the Piedmont Station food carts near his apartment. “I didn’t know what open mics were. I thought if you were funny, somebody made you famous. And then you talked for an hour.”

Watson’s comedy delves into some dicey territory: Alec Baldwin, enemas and school shootings. His laid-back, articulate delivery brings to mind a young Christian Slater, minus a few hot meals.

As a kid in Fairfax, Calif., it was Family Guy, along with Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. (he knows what you’re thinking) that made him laugh. “I used to watch Bill Cosby tapes

back to back and rewind them and start them over,” he says. “I grew up conservative and Christian, so I think the stuff I wasn’t supposed to be listening to was the funniest stuff that got to me.”

He moved to Portland five years ago to escape the high rents, intending to pursue a music career that didn’t pan out. “I’m not that good at it,” he laughs. “I started a band when I came up that fell off the rails. It was this bipolar dude I met working at a kitchen. We talked about it every day for six months and played together maybe three times.”

After his equipment broke, Watson realized he could get onstage and try comedy with no need for gear. In short order, he was getting onstage 10 or 12 times a week, a pace he still keeps up.

“The first bit I did was seven minutes long, and I had written the whole thing out like a script,” he recalls. “I was talking about bestiality. I made the bartender uncomfortable.”

Watson admits there are occasional nights he’d rather not get up in front of strangers, but beneath his slacker exterior is a strong work ethic.

“I’m pretty anxious,” he says. “The whole first year of doing comedy is humiliating yourself over and over. You gotta break down your ego and any idea that you have anything important to say because you find out really quick that no one really cares about what you have to say. Your job is to be funny. It’s the hardest thing ever.”

Watson is seven years sober, but he isn’t doing comedy to work out his former demons. “I think the whole idea that you have to be dark and twisted and tragic to be funny is fucking stupid,” he says. “Chances are, the better you’re doing mentally, the better you’re going to perform.”

Even in the midst of the pandemic, Watson found positivity.

“After the pandemic, I threw out all my material and started from scratch,” he says. “I had to learn about laughs per minute.

I used to have really long pauses and drag my feet a lot. I think anything that happens that makes you have to work harder to feel like you’re doing a good job is good for creativity.”

B Y L I B B Y M O LY N E AU X

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STREET

SPRING’S SPRUNG Photos by Chris Nesseth On Instagram: @chrisnesseth

Portland sprang back to life last weekend thanks to a flurry of events that had people out and about in a brief window of sunny weather. Whether attending NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games at Moda Center, eating a final meal at beloved downtown diner the Roxy, watching drag queen duo Trixie and Katya at the Schnitz, or pausing for a kiss at Waterfront Park, the city looked almost like it did pre-pandemic. Spring officially arrived Sunday, March 20, ushering in not only a new season, but also a bit of hope.

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White Bird at the reser

STARTERS

T H E MOST I MP ORTANT P O RTLA N D C U LTU R E STORI E S OF T H E W E E K—G RA P H E D .

R E A D M O R E A B O U T TH E S E STO R I E S AT WW E E K .CO M .

RIDICULOUS

LOS ANGELES

VERSA-STYLE DANCE COMPANY CO-FOUNDERS/ARTISTIC DIRECTORS, JACKIE LOPEZ & LEIGH FOAAD The Nano Beer Fest will take place on both sides of the river on multiple weekends this year.

“Los Angeles’ Best Dance Troupe for Hip-Hop Empowerment.”

-LA Weekly

AW F U L

AW E S O M E

Pono Brewing is opening its first brickand-mortar in the former Hollywood District home of Columbia River Brewing.

Photo By: George Simian

Juliett, a women in aviation-themed bar, opens inside the Portland International Airport.

The Imperial Bottle Shop & Taproom on Northeast Alberta closes, but the original Southeast Division location remains open.

FRI-SAT | APRIL 1-2 | 7:30PM SUN | APRIL 3 | 2:00PM PATRICIA RESER CENTER FOR THE ARTS, BEAVERTON TICKETS AT WHITEBIRD.ORG

After a two-year break, Michael Allen Harrison’s Ten Grands Concert returns.

The award-winning documentary Grandma’s Roses premieres at the Portland Art Museum.

SERIOUS 20

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

GET BUSY

STUFF TO DO IN PORTLAND THIS WEEK, INDOORS AND OUT. PORTLAND OPERA

 SEE: The Central Park Five

Antron McCray. Kevin Richardson. Yusef Salaam. Raymond Santana. Korey Wise. These names are at the center of Anthony Davis and Richard Wesley’s 2020 Pulitzer Prizewinning opera about the young Black and Latino men known as the Central Park Five, who in the late ’80s were falsely accused of rape, coerced into confessions and imprisoned.

Directed by Nataki Garrett, artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 503248-4335, portlandopera.org. 7:30 pm Thursday and Saturday, March 24 and 26. $35-$80.

 EAT: 16th Annual Portland Seafood & Wine Festival

For the first time since 2014, Oregon’s Dungeness crabbing season began on time in December, and so far it’s officially the most profitable one on the books. You can sample some of that haul this weekend at the Portland Seafood & Wine Festival, which features more than 200 exhibitors, including Pacific Northwest breweries, cideries and distilleries. Once you’ve had your fill of crab, sign up for the oyster-eating contest to test your skills with a shucking knife. Portland Expo Center, 2060 N Marine Drive, 503-736-5200, pdxseafoodandwinefestival.com. 2-10 pm Friday, noon-10 pm Saturday, March 25-26.

Free-$16 for regular admission, $125 for VIP tickets.



SEE: In the Name of Forgotten Women Here’s your word for the day: choreopoem. Coined by playwright Ntozake Shange in 1975, it describes a work that fuses dance, music and poetry—like In the Name of Forgotten Women, a co-production of CoHo Productions and GRITO Poetry/Productions written by Cindy Williams Gutiérrez.

Focused on seven diverse women, it’s billed as “a ceremony to restore the Feminine in the world.” CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 503-220-2646, cohoproductions.org. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, through April 16. Pay what you can.

Largest Ecological Gift Shop Largest Native Plant Nursery House plants • Edible plants Artisan Goods • Crafts • Arts

ddddd symbiop.com 3454 SE Powell Blvd 503-893-8427

Wake up to what matters in Portland.

Willamette Week’s daily newsletter arrives every weekday morning with the day's top news.



DRINK: Pints & Palettes As many a pandemic hobbyist discovered, painting can be an incredibly soothing pastime. Combine that with an evening of beer drinking and you might just reach next-level relaxation.

There’s no need to come into this Hammer & Stitch workshop with any artistic skills. Local painter Amy Wike will teach you all you need to know about the medium, introduce essential materials and techniques, and provide a variety of Portlandand beer-themed templates for you to fill in. Hammer & Stitch Brewing Co., 2377 NW Wilson St., 971-254-8982, hsbrew.co. 6 pm Thursday, March 24. $30.

� WATCH: Tammy and the T-Rex Before the late Paul Walker was Vin Diesel’s endearingly earnest wingman in the Fast & Furious series, his brain was implanted inside an animatronic T-Rex by a deranged scientist. That’s the premise of this 1994 Denise Richards comedy, which has been restored in 4K and screens at Hollywood Theatre as part of Anthony Hudson’s Mondo Trasho series.

Bonus: The film’s director, Stewart Raffill, made the infamous 1988 E.T. ripoff Mac and Me. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503-493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Friday, March 25. $8-$10.

Sign up by scanning!

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK

Top 5

Hot Plates WHERE TO EAT THIS WEEK.

1. RIPE COOPERATIVE

Editor: Andi Prewitt Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

Awesome Sauce

5425 NE 30th Ave., 503-841-6968, ripecooperative.com. Noon-8 pm Thursday-Saturday, noon-5 pm Sunday.

The lasagna at Naomi Pomeroy’s cafe-market is richness upon richness, with what is currently a duck Bolognese, ricotta and, per the website description, “lots of mozzarella and Parmesan.”

That’s no lie: This is more or less a white lasagna, and something of a dairy bomb, with a big layer of ricotta, béchamel and a three-cheese blend, plus mozzarella. You won’t need bread for sopping at the end, but you could probably fry a few potatoes in the slick of duck fat that’s left over.

2. REPÚBLICA THOMAS TEAL

Gabbiano’s crowd-pleasing Italian American menu, including marinara-filled mozzarella shot glasses, is already leading to weeknight waits for a table.

BY A N D R E A DA M E WO O D

721 NW 9th Ave., 541-900-5836, republicapdx. square.site. À la carte menu served 9 am-3 pm, chef’s tasting menu served 5-9 pm daily.

República has introduced Portland to another thread of Mexico’s complex gastronomic tapestry: the modernist-leaning tasting menu, which the Pearl District restaurant began serving in 2021.

Packaging indigenous Mexican ingredients with sophisticated technique in a town known for its disdain of pretension was bold as hell. But they have been pulling it off with aplomb. And the idea of simultaneously serving each twosome one vegetarian-leaning tasting menu and one with a meatier bent is brilliant, especially for good eaters who share.

3. ECLIPTIC BREWING

825 N Cook St., 503-265-8002, eclipticbrewing. com. Noon-8 pm Tuesday-Thursday and Sunday, noon-10 pm Friday-Saturday.

Portland Dining Month, traditionally held in March, has been scrapped yet again due to COVID, but Ecliptic is pressing ahead anyway, serving its own limited-edition, three-course meal for a fixed price. Choose between two appetizers and entrees, which include the house soup or a Bibb lettuce blue cheese salad start; then move on to grilled flank steak, or a Yukon gold potato gnocchi. All dinners end with a cheesecake brownie crumble. Pub grub this ain’t, proving breweries can serve upscale fare alongside stellar pints.

4. PICCONE’S CORNER

3434 NE Sandy Blvd., #400, 503-265-8263, picconescorner.com. 9 am-7 pm Tuesday-Saturday, 9 am-5 pm Sunday.

This combination butcher shop-restaurant continues to fill a hole in the city’s dining scene that was left when Old Salt Marketplace closed. Now, Piccone’s Corner is serving all-day breakfast, setting our ham-loving hearts awhirl. The updated menu includes a substantial plate of two eggs, polenta cakes and bacon or sausage links, mushroom toast, and an obligatory grain bowl. But our eyes are set on the breakfast sandwich topped with your choice of house-cured pork from Wallow & Root farms.

5. PACIFIC CRUST PIZZA COMPANY

400 SW Broadway, 503-719-5010, pacificcrustpizzaco.com. 11 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-11 pm Friday-Saturday.

The pies at this outdoors-themed pizzeria blur the line between New York and New Haven styles, which is a delightful hybrid for those who like to fold their slices as easily as a book yet appreciate a hefty rim for its chew and crunch. However, Pacific Crust’s greatest strength is its ability to allow each topping to have its moment. Nowhere is that better exhibited than in the Traverse, a crimson-andgold disc of lightly smoked tomato sauce and corn kernels adorned with a tuft of peppery arugula.

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Certain restaurants are just like certain people: You know you’re gonna like them from the first moment you lay eyes on them.

Gabbiano’s and I clicked right away thanks to its warm, bustling interior with hand-painted Italian fresco walls, a line cook pounding out chicken breasts for Parm in the back, and a “When you’re here, you’re family,” vibe that Olive Garden can only fake.

And I’m not alone in feeling that love. Open since January and run by Portland restaurant veterans David Sigal and Blake Foster, the Northeast Portland Italian American-inspired space is already boasting waits for its walk-in-only seating—even on a sleepy Wednesday. While decidedly East Coast red sauce in its overall approach, Gabbiano’s menu could please everyone from a picky kid to a picky traditionalist to a picky gourmand.

Everybody is talking about the mozzarella cups ($10), which sell out early each night. Breaded and fried cheese is served as a molded shot glass filled with tangy marinara. It’s more than a gimmick, though—they’re actually terrific. Go full ’90s revival and order a limoncello drop ($12), a far more interesting twist on the sugary original, with housemade saffron limoncello and roasted lemon vodka.

The classics are also dialed in. For instance, the massive chicken Parmesan ($20) is a monolith of juicy brined breast breaded and fried to golden perfection, then topped with marinara and ample mozzarella. It’s even juicy the next day when reheated in the oven and turned into a sandwich. There’s no spaghetti on the menu, but there is chitarra ($14), a thicker and slightly softer version of the noodle that comes with marinara and Parmesan. Add the meatballs for $7; they’re a pork-andbeef blend with just the right amount of breadcrumbs-to-fat ratio for a dense, succulent bite.

A Caesar ($12) was standard issue but done well—oh so much anchovy on a bed of crisp gem lettuce, and the fry on an order of calamari ($14) was appropriately light in order to give the squid the spotlight. Pro tip: Ask for a ramekin of red sauce for dipping, because the aioli was just a bit too rich and one note.

There’s also a nod, here and there, to Pacific Northwest ingredients. The Girlfriend Pasta ($25) comes with a heaping helping of Dungeness crab atop squid ink tagliatelle that is buttery on the front end followed by a substantial kick from the Calabrian chile. There’s also some mint in the mix, and more herbs and acid would have been a welcome way to make the dish a touch more complex.

Gabbiano’s joins an already impressive clique of food and drink on this small stretch of Northeast 30th Avenue, including Expatriate and Dame. I’m glad to see it’s become an instant member of that club.

EAT: Gabbiano’s, 5411 NE 30th Ave., 503-719-4373, gabbianospdx.com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Sunday.

Dish Breakdown: Gabbiano’s Fried Mozzarella

BY J A S O N C O H E N

@cohenesque

It started with a haircut.

Gabbiano’s chef Daniel Rehbein was still working on the Concordia restaurant’s menu when his barber, Jax of Jax Garage, mentioned seeing fried mozzarella “shot glasses” on Instagram. Rehbein decided to play with the idea at a pre-opening dinner, and now almost every cook at Gabbiano’s spends at least part of their shift packing shredded mozzarella into silicone molds, part of a nearly 24-hour process.

On Gabbiano’s menu, the dish seems innocent enough: “Fried mozzarella, panko, Parmesan, marinara, parsley.” But what gets sent out to the table is refined, deconstructed—or is that reconstructed?—and whimsical, even if you can’t actually do a “shot” of marinara. This is not the stuff of chain restaurants or sports bars, but a high-quality—and, dare we say, fork-and-knife-required—riff on an Italian American classic. Nearly every table gets at least one order until the kitchen runs out, which can happen as early as 7 pm (it makes around two dozen plates a night).

“It’s a monster, labor-wise, but it has made us who we are,” Rehbein says. “It’s one of those things that’s never going to go away.”

Here’s how the molten cheesy magic happens.

Top 5

Buzz List WHERE TO DRINK THIS WEEK.

THOMAS TEAL

1. STEEPLEJACK BREWING COMPANY

2400 NE Broadway, 503-206-8880, steeplejackbeer.com. 9 am-10 pm daily.

Like so many beloved Portland buildings lost to redevelopment, the 1909 Metropolitan Community Church appeared to be destined for the backhoe. But a pair of old college buddies looking to open their own brewery stumbled across the real estate listing and decided it would be the perfect place for Steeplejack. The breathtaking architecture and stained glass are reason enough to visit, but for a limited time you can also find a rare beer on tap: a Dortmund-style lager made with oysters and seaweed. Collaborator Flying Fish is also pouring the brew while it lasts.

2. SUCKERPUNCH C A R LY D I A Z

1030 SE Belmont St., 503-208-4022, suckerpunch.bar. 6-11 pm Thursday-Sunday.

Suckerpunch, the local business that started as a no-booze cocktail kit vendor in 2020, has launched an experimental pop-up in the Goat Blocks—further proof the alcohol-free trend is gaining steam after a well-documented spike in pandemic drinking. Here, you’ll find a regular rotation of zero-proof, seasonally inspired cocktails along with events like tasting flights and dessert pairings.

WE’RE ALL FAMILY HERE: Gabbiano’s East Coast red sauce approach should please the pickiest of eaters, even kiddos.

Five-pound blocks of full-fat, low-moisture mozzarella—including what it uses for chicken Parm, Gabbiano’s goes through 80 pounds a week—is shredded in a Robot Coupe processor, painstakingly stuffed into one of 14 eight-slot molds, and then baked for 10 minutes and cooled overnight. One order (three glasses) uses one-third of a pound of cheese.

THOMAS TEAL

The Mozzarella

The fried cheese is filled with a classic marinara: Alta Cucina canned tomatoes, bay leaves, garlic, butter and onions, with the onions left whole and removed at the end.

“It is as true to the ingredients as possible,” says Rehbein. “We really wanted to let that marinara sauce shine, and let the cheese shine, and kind of take you back to a new version of that memory that everyone has of a mozzarella stick.”

THOMAS TEAL

The Finished Product

4784 SE 17th Ave., Suite 150, 503-975-5669, 503distilling.com. 3-9 pm Thursday-Saturday, 1-7 pm Sunday.

Portland has a new outlet where you can sample draft cocktails right next door to the source. 503 Distilling recently opened a lounge adjacent to its distillery inside the Iron Fireman Collective building. That’s where you’ll find six rotating cocktails on tap, plus made-to-order mixed drinks, beer and wine. The draft options offer visitors first tastes of some of the newest concoctions coming out of the distillery, acting as something of a laboratory. And once you’ve had your fill of spirits, Ruse Brewing is a short stumble away.

4. PUNCH BOWL SOCIAL

The Bread and Dredge

It’s the standard breading procedure times two: The unmolded mozz gets dredged in seasoned flour, egg and panko—the bread crumbs are also first blitzed in the food processor for a finer texture—followed by another round of egg and panko. Then they’re popped into the freezer to harden.

3. 503 DISTILLING LOUNGE

340 SW Morrison St., #4305, 503-334-0360, punchbowlsocial.com/location/portland. 11 am-11 pm Sunday-Thursday, 11 am-1 am Friday-Saturday.

If you’re looking for a bar to hunker down in and watch nonstop March Madness games, head to Punch Bowl Social. Sure, the 32,000-squarefoot gaming palace may be in a mall, but it fills a wonderful niche in downtown Portland—there’s something on the menu for everyone, a deep beer list and creative cocktails, to boot. New brunch items like chicken and biscuits, raspberry waffles and Southwest green chorizo fries should also help you fuel up for those early morning matches.

5. TURN! TURN! TURN!

8 NE Killingsworth St., 503-284-6019, turnturnturnpdx.com. 4-10 pm Wednesday-Monday. Open later on event nights.

You’ll still find records and CDs for sale at this bar, music venue and event space, as well as food and drink. However, the menu has changed under the new ownership. There is now an intentionally simple lineup of brown rice and black bean bowls with various garnishes. Six Northwest beers are on tap, and there’s a refrigerator case full of more beverages. Behind the bar there’s also liquor, though no cocktails per se—order as you would in a dive bar or most rock clubs.

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POTLANDER A S H E LY A N D E R S O N / L A U R I E + M A R YJ A N E

EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS: When Laurie Wolf got into the cannabis industry, her goal was to make edibles that tasted better than those already on the market.

Mother Herb We sat down with Laurie Wolf, founder of local edible company Laurie + MaryJane, to learn more about the business and her personal history with pot.

BY B R I A N N A W H E E L E R

Laurie Wolf is to stoners what Martha Stewart is to WASPs. Both are lifestyle icons whose inspiring canons appeal to specific groups of consumers, regardless of their age. However, your average Portland pot smoker is likely far more familiar with Wolf’s work, which includes books like The Cannabis Apothecary (2020), Herb: Mastering the Art of Cooking with Cannabis (2015), and years of recipe contributions to High Times, Dope and Culture magazines to name a few.

Despite the fact that women make up half the owner-operators in the cannabis industry, there are precious few held up as idols. That makes Laurie Wolf all the more special: She continues to be a die-hard cannabis connoisseur, advocate, award-winning baker and producer of some of the finest edibles available in Oregon through her business Laurie + MaryJane.

“I feel like there are people making things who just have no fucking clue,” says Wolf of fly-by-night edible producers.

“They’re like, ‘This is good enough.’ We never want to be just ‘good enough.’”

WW caught up with Wolf during Women’s History Month to ask her what inspired her to start an edibles company, how weed helped her through motherhood and why anyone interested in starting their own cannabusiness might want to think twice before pursuing that career path.

WW: Tell us about the first time you smoked weed.

Laurie Wolf : I was 15. Is that early? The first time I didn’t get high, but after that became completely in love with cannabis. From 15 to 20, I was a regular smoker. When I was 20, my

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mother died and it was a horrific time in my family. I stopped because I was super anxious. At some point, I ended up plummeting into the most horrific depression. I could barely function. I couldn’t smoke during the day because I couldn’t really accomplish anything. So I’d just be miserable. And then I would smoke at night, and it was like all those horrible feelings were gone. I was myself, my funnier self.

When you left New York City to retire in Portland, you established yourself as a go-to cannabis foodie. Why the hard pivot to pot?

When I was 30, I was diagnosed with absence epilepsy. I’ll become very flushed, nauseous and dizzy. It could be several minutes of me not knowing where I am. It’s really scary. The first two weeks we were here, we went to a Volvo dealership. I was sitting next to this old guy with white hair and a crazy-professor vibe. We started talking and I said, “I have epilepsy,” and he said, “Are you using cannabis?” He was a cannabis doctor! I didn’t even know cannabis was medically legal. He said, “Call this number. You’ll get your license, and I’m telling you with what you have, cannabis will take care of it.”

Did that interaction inspire you to found Laurie + MaryJane?

Yes, absolutely. I wanted people to have access to edibles that tasted good, because back in 2014, it was a whole different thing. My son Nick and his wife Mary decided to move out here from New York. I hardly knew Mary. I mean, I had met her maybe three times, but she asked, “Do you mind if I play around with your logo?” She started with the whisk, and it just

completely changed the look. I asked her to be my partner and the rest is history.

How do you develop your recipes?

Many manufactured edibles taste nasty to me because they’re not using coconut oil or butter. They’re using a distillate. I think some people don’t mind, but I hate that chemical taste.

While I don’t love the taste of cannabis, I understand the taste of cannabis. Our goal was to make edibles that led to a great experience and tasted great. Like, you would eat them even if you weren’t wanting to get high.

As a soon-to-be grandmother, what are your thoughts on motherhood and cannabis?

Once I had Nick, I didn’t smoke for a bunch of years. And then when we adopted Olivia, I was like, “Eesh, two kids. I really need to do something.” But I’m not a drinker. So I started smoking again. I had to be careful, so I would go outside and get high, and I’d come back in and the kids would be like, “Hey, how come Mom’s in such a good mood?” Because the stress just lifted off of me. It was wonderful.

What advice would you give to the entrepreneurial cannabis chef just starting out in their kitchen?

Don’t do it! [laughs] The better way to say that is that you better want it more than anything else in your life, because it is so hard.

Laurie + Mary Jane’s newest edibles, Bleublees gummies, are now available in dispensaries statewide.

PERFORMANCE

MUSIC

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson | Contact: bennett@wweek.com S H AW N T E S I M S

Now Hear This Listening recommendations from the past, present, Portland and the periphery.

BY DANIEL BROMFIELD // @BROMF3

SOMETHING OLD

During the hiatus of legendary British band Slowdive, a few of its members recorded 1995’s Ask Me Tomorrow, an album of stately, road trip-friendly songs as Mojave 3 that treat country music as a form of shoegaze. Their reserved, European distance from their American influences defines their approach—just as Led Zeppelin treated the blues as a sound rather than the genre, Mojave 3 zeroes in on the way steel guitar, ethereal vocals and ungodly amounts of reverb can evoke wide-open landscapes and late-night melancholy.

SOMETHING NEW HANDS ACROSS AMERICA: WRICK Jones, Andrea Vernae, Henry Noble, and Victor Mack in Gem of the Ocean.

Gem of the Century Portland Center Stage delivers a powerful production of Gem of the Ocean, from August Wilson’s Century Cycle.

BY M O R G A N S H AU N E T T E

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson is best known for his Century Cycle, a collection of 10 stories, each one set in a different decade of the 20th century, that look at the lives of Black Americans and their struggles in a callous and unjust world.

Gem of the Ocean, which is currently onstage at Portland Center Stage, is the first of these stories chronologically. Set in 1904, the play introduces audiences to Aunt Ester Tyler, a shamanistic woman who acts as a spiritual adviser to misguided Blacks who need to get their souls clean. However, absolution doesn’t come easy, as one particular young traveler soon learns.

As Gem begins, Ester (Treasure Lunan) lives at 1839 Wiley Ave. in Pittsburgh’s Hill District with her caregiver Eli (Victor Mack) and her protégée Black Mary (Andrea Vernae). When disgruntled mill worker Citizen Barlow (Henry Noble) arrives at her home seeking her aid, Ester, surprisingly, allows him in, promising to give the divine cleansing Citizen thinks he desperately needs (but not in the way he expects).

Gem of the Ocean sets itself apart from other plays in the Century Cycle by indulging in magical realism. Aunt Ester claims to be 285 years old and remembers coming to America on slave ships. Her wisdom is a mix of African rituals and biblical allegory that’s just insightful enough to make the audience wonder how much of it is true.

The production wisely plays into the polysemy of the story—Ester’s home is a ramshackle old house, but it creaks and groans like a ship at sea. Citizen’s vision quest in the second half might be a genuine spiritual experience or simply the result of a wily old woman’s theatricality.

Lunan leans into the ambiguity, giving a performance that pays off tremendously. They imbue Ester with both wisdom and a cackling sense of humor that leaves the audience unsure of her powers, but grateful to see her onstage nonetheless.

Of course, Gem isn’t without its more grounded, serious elements.

The backdrop of the story is the growing tensions between the resentful employees of a local tin mill and the wage-slavery practices

of its owners. The two sides are represented by Solly Two Kings (WRICK Jones), a former Underground Railroad conductor who is sympathetic to the millers’ plight, and Caesar (Bobby Bermea), the local policeman and Mary’s estranged brother.

Despite only appearing sporadically, Caesar is a surprisingly fascinating villain. He’s been able to advance and prosper in the immediate post-slavery age, but is unaware (or unwilling to admit) that he only succeeded by stepping on his fellow Blacks. His villainy feels especially relevant given Portland’s recent clashes with law enforcement, serving as a reminder that what’s legal and what’s right don’t always intersect.

Caesar is unerringly devoted to upholding the law and makes no concessions, to the point he has no moral qualms about killing a suspect over a stolen loaf of bread. Even still, he wants desperately to maintain a relationship with his sister, ignoring how much she and everyone else despises him.

The cast is uniformly strong, but the one who ends up having to carry most of the play is Noble. Citizen is our everyman and our guide to Ester’s strange world. He has to reflect our curiosity and wonder at this maybe magical, maybe mundane matriarch but never let his pain and desperation be forgotten.

Noble fulfills the play’s demands, radiating energy and never letting his journey be swept away in the chaos. At the same time, Jones ably brings Solly to life, giving the character a wry sense of humor and rebellious spirit, but also a sense of gravitas and seriousness when called upon.

By story’s end, Gem of the Ocean reminds the audience of the fact that while freedom is the ideal, it isn’t free—and that for Black Americans that bill has yet to be paid. So long as exploitative capitalism, oppressive law enforcement, and erasure of Black history live, freedom is under threat, and it’s on all of us to remember our past, learn in the present, and apply those teachings to a more equitable, more just future.

SEE IT: Gem of the Ocean plays at Portland Center Stage, 128 NW 11th Ave., 503-445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm WednesdaySunday, 2 pm Saturdays and Sundays, 2 pm select Thursdays.

Schedule may vary for some shows. Tickets start at $25.

The post-Beatles focus on writing one’s own songs has led to some real brainworms in the music world: Covers are frowned on, interpreters are undervalued, and musical merit is equated with elbow grease. Thank God for Jake Xerxes Fussell, who sings traditional folk songs as if unlacing them from his brain. His new collection, Good and Green Again, is his best and most beautiful yet—and he’ll be opening for the Magnetic Fields, themselves enthusiastic plunderers of America’s musical heritage, at Aladdin Theater on April 19 and 20.

SOMETHING LOCAL

Lockdown 2020 led to the loss of precious rehearsal time for countless rock bands, but The Macks had the advantage of living together, getting tighter and tighter in order to record their third album, Rabbit. Ben Windhem’s spurts of guitar scatter pell-mell across the music, and though Sam Fulwiler’s sharp tenor takes some getting used to, he’s a commanding and charismatic frontman. He struts the stage with abandon, with no commitment to playing an instrument; his antics aren’t to be missed when The Macks play Polaris Hall on April 2.

SOMETHING ASKEW

George & James pays tribute to two of the great American composers, George Gershwin and James Brown—but this being a record by the long-running, anonymous band of pranksters The Residents, there’s a twist. Their version of “Rhapsody in Blue” slows that jubilant piece down to a depressive dirge, but the real attraction is the Brown half, which takes 1962’s almighty Live at the Apollo and turns down the power 30%. Brown becomes an arthritic robot, the horns are tinny blasts of greeting-card noise, and the only thing left unscathed, hilariously, are the backing vocals.

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SCREENER

MOVIES

Editor: Bennett Campbell Ferguson Contact: bennett@wweek.com

G ET YO U R R E P S I N

Opening Night (1977)

OPENING UP: Katie Nguyen in Crouching Comic.

Hecklers, Beware A standup comedian finds her voice in Crouching Comic, starring Katie Nguyen.

BY C H A N C E S O L E M - P F E I F E R

@chance_ s _ p

With a toothbrush microphone and an audience of heckling junk mail, the new Portland short film Crouching Comic peeks at the earliest stages of a comedian’s creative process.

The film stars Portland standup comedian Katie Nguyen (winner of Willamette Week’s 2021 Funniest Five Poll) as Leila, a fledgling standup who’s writing and rehearsing her new material on Asian fetishization, bullies turned foodies, and the impasses between the dreams of immigrant parents and those of their children.

Crouching Comic premieres in Portland on April 1 at a one-night festival very much in the spirit of the film: CINE / SEEN, which will showcase six Pacific Northwest-made films from underrepresented filmmakers, plus live standup by Nguyen and Shain Brenden at the Hollywood Theatre.

The event is co-organized by Crouching Comic director and co-writer Alberta Poon, a Portland film and music veteran who met her co-writer and star Nguyen some 10 years ago at a warehouse arts event Poon likens to a more DIY version of CINE / SEEN. After collaborating previously on one of Poon’s student films, she and Nguyen conceived Crouching Comic to illustrate and lightly surrealize how an Asian American woman navigates the “white man’s world” of standup comedy.

“You have to balance perfectly that this [film] is set in reality, but the places we go are highlighting how ridiculous sometimes our lives can be as Asian American women,” says Poon, known to many in the Portland arts scene for her comedic web series Scorpiono and her bands Wet Confetti and Reporter.

Bringing to life Leila’s ricocheting mindset in Crouching Comic, Poon aimed to squeeze out every ounce of possible production value from a three-room setting. The film plays with invisible crowd noise, extrapolates a rock instrumental out of a Zojirushi rice cooker’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” beeper and pulls off a particularly involved whip pan that suddenly sees Leila’s bathroom lit like a comedy club.

That shot, executed practically, required 14 takes. “That was really fun, even though it was a nightmare to get,” Poon says.

26

Willamette Week MARCH 23, 2022 wweek.com

On a narrative level, Crouching Comic reveals the gauntlet that Leila must go through just to get out the door to her open mic. First, she weaves a few traumatic stories (featuring creepy ex-boyfriends and schoolmates mocking her Vietnamese lunches) into standup material. Then, her mother calls with the usual hassles: When will Mom be a grandparent, why is Leila wasting her time on comedy?

“I think the mom part of the story is a highlight,” Poon says. “We’re both daughters of immigrant Asian women.

So there were things where [Katie] was like, ‘My mom wouldn’t say that.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, my mom would.’”

There’s a genuine sting in Leila’s phone call with her mother (who is animated as a talking photograph), but it’s also fuel that helps her battle her next round of doubters.

Those include a marketing mailer stuck to her fridge featuring a smirking dude interrupting to ask why Leila is rehearsing all this “not relatable” material.

“The heckling is a combination of comments said to Katie and I in real life by men,” Poon says. “Those comments invade your psyche and become part of when you doubt yourself. Maybe no one said it to you in three weeks, but it’s your demons thinking back on those unsolicited comments.”

Without spoiling the film’s climax, let’s just say Leila’s paper skeptics prompt her to rethink her inner circle—real or imagined. That theme harmonizes well with Poon’s decision to recruit an entirely Asian American crew for Crouching Comic, which she says started as a “wild idea” and turned into a “magical experience.”

Assembling a communal film production by artists of color is in keeping with the CINE / SEEN programming, which will also feature the premiere of Portland filmmaker Ali Godil’s short film American-istan, plus recent work

by Shariffa Ali, Joe Bowden, Ashley Song, Evan Benally Atwood and Robin Vada Song.

“It did sometimes make things harder,” Poon says of putting together the Asian American crew. “Some of the people were not as experienced as if I just hired someone I knew. But I think it was worth it, because it was truly an unprecedented Portland crew. We didn’t do it to brag about; we did it for us.”

SEE IT: Crouching Comic screens at CINE / SEEN at the Hollywood Theatre. 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503493-1128, hollywoodtheatre.org. 7:30 pm Friday, April 1. $10.

The closing-night feature of the Clinton’s John Cassavetes Retrospective is, ironically, Opening Night, his true masterpiece. Cassavetes’ wife Gena Rowlands stars as an alcoholic stage actress struggling to adapt to “older” roles. Cassavetes himself co-stars as her co-star, and their scenes together are pure electricity. Clinton, March 24.

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

In this campy sci-fi horror comedy, the murdered boyfriend (Paul Walker) of a high school student (Denise Richards) has his brain implanted in the body of a robotic T. rex by a mad scientist. This 4K restoration is the infamous “gore cut” (the filmmakers had to scrap quite a bit of violence to earn a PG-13 rating), which wasn’t discovered until 2017. Hollywood, March 25.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

The NW Film Center is now PAM CUT, and it’s kicking off the relaunch with a Tilda Swinton tribute called “Tilda-Whirl”! Wes Anderson’s delightful caper follows a dedicated hotel concierge (Ralph Fiennes, at his very best) and his lobby boy (Tony Revolori) as they attempt to clear the former of the murder of his elderly dowager lover (Swinton).

PAM CUT, March 26.

Beau Travail (1999)

French auteur Claire Denis directs this gorgeously choreographed drama about an ex-Foreign Legion officer (Denis Lavant) recalling his days in Djibouti, where his seething jealousy for a handsome, popular recruit had dangerous consequences (repressing one’s desires often does). The finale is so mesmerizing that Vulture crowned it the best movie ending of all time! Clinton, March 28.

The Piano (1993)

Celebrate The Power of the Dog’s probable Oscar wins with Jane Campion’s history-making The Piano. She was the first-ever woman to win the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes for this period drama, which centers on a mute woman (Holly Hunter) and her loveless arranged marriage (to Sam Neill), her affair with a local New Zealander (Harvey Keitel), and her beloved piano. Hollywood, March 28.

ALSO PLAYING: Cinema 21: Out of the Past (1947), March 26. Clinton: Amarcord (1973), March 23. Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), March 24. Kwaidan (1964), March 25. Hype! (1996), March 27. A Brief History of Time (1991), March 29. Hollywood: Flesh and the Devil (1926), March 26. The Road Warrior (1981), March 26. The Torch (2019), March 29.

PAM CUT: Caravaggio (1986), March 26.

MOVIES TOP PICK OF THE WEEK OUR KEY

: THIS MOVIE IS EXCELLENT, ONE OF THE BEST OF THE YEAR. : THIS MOVIE IS GOOD. WE RECOMMEND YOU WATCH IT. : THIS MOVIE IS ENTERTAINING BUT FLAWED. : THIS MOVIE IS A STEAMING PILE.

is spread around town of the African man staying with Svetla, sparking rash speculation filtered through xenophobia, racism and misinformation.

Hristov’s cleverly injected comedic beats in the face of absurd situations become fleeting as the looming danger grows, tapping into the gut-wrenching lessons of history that subconsciously warn the audience of what’s to come. NR. RAY GILL JR. Apple TV+, Vudu.

TURNING RED

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

INFINITE STORM Pam Bales’ heroic story of rescue and survival on Mount Washington stretches well beyond the standard human-vs.-nature narrative—and director Malgorzata Szumowska isn’t afraid to go there. Based on an article in Reader’s Digest, “High Places: Footprints in the Snow Lead to an Emotional Rescue” by Ty Gagne, the movie centers on Bales (Naomi Watts), a climber and member of a local search and rescue team who finds John (Billy Howle), a stranger alone on the mountain, slowly succumbing to extreme wintry conditions and resigned to his fate. Bales snaps into action, taking John on a perilous journey down the mountain and into the teeth of an unforgiving blizzard. Szumowska doesn’t lean on sweeping shots, opting instead to use the camera to create a more visceral experience by lingering on Bales’ painfully human struggle—the trauma of losing loved ones to the mountain is the crux of the story—while Watts reminds us why she’s twice been nominated for an Oscar (for 21 Grams and The Impossible) with an unfiltered performance that you won’t soon forget. Overall, the film indulges a bit too much in the morose to be considered entertaining, but it still delivers an effective and powerful examination of grief and the value of life. R. RAY GILL JR. Bridgeport, Clackamas, Cornelius 10, Fox Tower, Movies on TV, Progress Ridge, Studio One.

DEEP WATER

Vic (Ben Affleck) is rich. By designing a computer chip used in drone warfare, he bought himself ample time to pursue his favorite hobbies— biking, cultivating a snail colony, and quietly murdering the many lovers of his wife, Melinda (Ana de Armas). Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith and directed by Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction), Deep Water savors the thrills of sadistic foreplay.

“Finally, some emotion,” Melinda sneers when Vic confronts her about one of her affairs.

Cuckolding him turns her on, but they’re both aroused by his vicious hunger to control her.

Melinda’s conquests may think that they’ve captured a slice of her soul, but they’re merely pieces on the chess board that is her marriage to Vic—just like Lionel (Tracy Letts), a snoopy acquaintance who knows too much about their relationship for his own good. All of this is sick, slick fun, thanks to Lyne’s mastery of the film’s menacing atmosphere and the peerless pairing of de Armas and Affleck.

Her teasing cruelty clashes delectably with his sinister stoicism, creating a confounding balance between their performances. Deep Water could have been a hysterical thriller about the horrors of having an unfaithful wife or a post-#MeToo indictment of a deadly husband, but it’s neither. Lyne, Affleck

and de Armas have instead created an erotic game in which man and wife have an equal stake in the inevitably twisted outcome. Progress? Possibly.

Entertainment? Undeniably. R. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Hulu.

DRIVE MY CAR

After you see Drive My Car, you will never look at snow, suspension bridges or stages the same way again. When you see the world through the searching eyes of director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, there is no such thing as mere scenery. There is only the living fabric of the places and objects that envelop Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Misaki (Tôko Miura), whose compassion and complexity are a world unto themselves. Most of the film is set in Hiroshima, where Yûsuke is directing a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Misaki is assigned to be his driver, but their relationship transcends the divide between the front seat and the back. During drives, conversations, and surreal yet strangely believable adventures, their reserve gradually erodes as they reveal their losses and their inner lives to each other, building to a cathartic climax that leaves you at once shattered and soaring. The film, based on a novella by Haruki Murakami, isn’t afraid to face the agony of grief and loneliness, but Hamaguchi’s obvious love for his characters

suffuses the entire journey with life-giving warmth. A tender, hopeful coda set during the pandemic could have been cringeworthy, but like every moment of the movie, it’s worth believing in because Hamaguchi’s sincerity is beyond question. “We must keep on living,” Yûsuke tells Misaki. With those words, he speaks not only to her but to us.

NR. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen Parkway, Hollywood.

FEAR

Bulgarian writer-director Ivaylo Hristov’s Fear portrays humanity with brute honesty and moments of levity.

Shot in beautifully ominous black-and-white, the film drops in on the life of Svetla (Svetlana Yancheva), a gruff widow and recently unemployed teacher living near the Turkish border who runs across an African refugee named Bamba (Michael Flemming) attempting to make his way to Germany.

With the authorities bogged down as they deal with the many immigrants coming to Svetla’s dilapidated town, she finds herself reluctantly taking Bamba in while town officials figure out what to do with him. A fascinating relationship starts to take shape between Svetla and Bamba, despite the socially constructed obstacles posed by language, nationality and race. Before long, word

In Turning Red, the latest kinetic gem from Pixar Animation Studios, 13-yearold Meilin (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) howls, “I’m a gross red monster!” Given her age, you might think she’s talking about pimples, but Meilin is speaking literally—when her emotions rise, she transforms into a fuzzy red panda. It’s a metaphor, but for what? Puberty? Coming out? Discovering a furry fetish? Audiences are likely to put forth dueling perspectives, which is a sign of the film’s smarts—it’s too sweeping and mythic to be confined to a single interpretation. Meilin’s mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), wants to perform a ritual to banish the panda in her daughter’s soul, but Meilin cheerily and firmly tells her, “My panda, my choice, Mom,” a characteristically loaded line from a studio that specializes in serving up allegorical baggage for all ages. Both kids and adults will appreciate that Turning Red, directed by Domee Shi, revels in Meilin’s panda-mode exultation—she beats up a bully and bounds across rooftops—but above all, the film is for girls Meilin’s age. As a triumphant “Pandas, assemble!” climax suggests, Turning Red, the first Pixar film with an all-female creative leadership team, wants them to feel both entertained and seen. PG. BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Disney+.

X

A skillful, clever, not entirely satisfying homage to the heyday of both skin flicks and slasher cinema, the latest left-field fearjerker by Ti West (The Innkeepers, The Sacrament) thrusts new meaning into grindhouse. It’s a bloodsteeped farmer’s grandmother yarn about a van full of overripe, reflective, Linklaterian Texas stoners renting a ramshackle cabin from a decrepit couple for an amateur hardcore shoot.

An undersexed harpie and long-suffering codger might not seem especially terrifying on paper, but West expertly teases, say, the looming specter of Chekhov’s Alligator just long

enough for audiences to walk straight into the business end of a rusted pitchfork. If anything, the technical facility and lockstep set pieces can feel too perfectly composed. Given the sheer amount of peen and gore on display, there’s an odd sense of restraint tempering the anarchic abandon that burbles throughout the classics of the genre. Halfhearted attempts at providing a psychological basis for the elderly couple’s homicidal mania weaken the lingering air of menace as swiftly an acoustic Fleetwood Mac cover kills any sexual tension. Like a cameraman/budding-indie-auteur character pointedly claims, every dirty (or scary) movie may as well strive for greatness. R. JAY HORTON. Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, City Center, Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen Parkway, Fox Tower, Hollywood, Living Room, Laurelhurst, Lloyd Center, Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Studio One, Tigard.

THE BATMAN

“What’s black and blue and dead all over?” In The Batman, the Riddler (Paul Dano) poses that question to the Dark Knight (Robert Pattinson), but blacks and blues don’t figure into the film much—visually, morally and emotionally, it’s a gray movie. While director Matt Reeves brought a majestic mournfulness to the Planet of the Apes series, he seems utterly lost in Gotham City. His nearly three-hour film is less a narrative than a mechanistic survey of a political conspiracy that the Riddler wants to expose—the story starts after the murder of Bruce Wayne’s parents not just because we’ve seen it before, but because Reeves is more interested in plot than pathos. Even the soulful, sultry presence of Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman can’t liven up the film—she and the Batman flirt so chastely that if it weren’t for a few F-bombs and clumsily staged fight scenes, Reeves could have easily gotten away with a G rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

When Christopher Nolan was directing the Dark Knight trilogy, he tore into the Batman mythos with fervor, whereas Reeves just seems to be lackadaisically marinating in misery—especially when the film attempts an embarrassingly halfhearted critique of Bruce and the rest of Gotham’s 1%. What’s dead all over? The Batman. PG-13.

BENNETT CAMPBELL FERGUSON. Academy, Bagdad, Cedar Hills, Cinema 21, Cinemagic, City Center, Eastport, Fox Tower, Laurelhurst, Living Room, Lloyd Center, Pioneer Place, St. Johns, St. Johns Theater & Pub, St. Johns Twin, Studio One, Tigard.

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JONESIN’

FREE WILL

B Y M AT T J O N E S

"OK Computer"--each has an integral component.

ASTROLOGY ARIES

(March 21-April 19): In 1904, it wasn't illegal to use performance-enhancing drugs during Olympic competitions. Runner Thomas Hicks took advantage of this in the marathon race. The poison strychnine, which in small doses serves as a stimulant, was one of his boosters. Another was brandy. By the time he approached the finish line, he was hallucinating and stumbling. His trainers carried him the rest of the way, and he was declared the winner. I recommend you make him your inspirational role model in the coming weeks. How might you cheat to gain a great victory? APRIL FOOL! I Lied. While it's true that a meaningful triumph is within your reach, you're most likely to achieve it by acting with total integrity, following the rules, and imbibing no stimulating poisons.

TAURUS

(April 20-May 20): Science fiction aficionado Wil Wheaton suggests that all of us should have the following: 1. a nemesis; 2. an evil twin; 3. a secret headquarters; 4. an escape hatch; 5. a partner in crime; 6. a secret identity.

Dear Taurus, I have doubts that you possess any of these necessities. Please embark on intensive efforts to acquire all of them. Your deadline is April 21. APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. There's no way you could add all those things to your repertoire in such a short time. See if you can at least get a secret identity and a partner in crime. It’s time to have wicked fun as you add to your potency and effectiveness.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): "I hate being on my

ACROSS 1. When quadrupled, a Crash Test Dummies hit 4. "Dog Day Afternoon" chant 10. Crypto art initials 13. 2010 health law, for short 14. Umpire's error 16. Gp. with auditors 17. Paste that can be used in breads and meat dishes

53. One of Paul Revere's signals 55. Possible choice

24. "Lawrence of Arabia," for one

56. "Addams Family" cousin

25. Groups indiscriminately

57. Nurikabe, Masyu, or sudoku

28. Hall-of-Famer Ripken

60. Advanced degree in math?

32. Getting some air

61. More racy, as humor 62. Snakelike fish 63. Garage opener?

19. _ _ _ au vin

64. Decorated again

20. "The Usual Gang of _ _ _" (Mad Magazine group)

65. Source of the skit "Word Crunch," where players find inappropriate words in a word search

21. Screen that may loop until you start the movie 23. Heat, in Honduras 24. "Night" essayist Wiesel 26. It is, to Iglesias

22. Blend together

DOWN 1. Specialty of the late Amazing Johnathan

29. Tick off 33. Vegan coffee shop order 34. Nicholas Sparks's "Nights in _ _ _" 35. 9-digit no. issuer 36. Bars in supermarkets 37. Time out 40. Telly watcher 43. Commotion 44. Van _ _ _ Mungo ('30s-'40s baseball player with a novelty song named for him)

2. Engineer for whom a type of paving is named

45. Tarnished

30. Prepare a slingshot

3. Henner of "Evening Shade" and "Taxi"

47. Game show giveaways

31. River painted by van Gogh

4. "Roll to Me" group Del ___

32. It's south of Leb.

5. Eyelid twitches, e.g.

54. Links star Ernie

35. 1998 Matthew Lillard film set in Utah

6. Cough syrup amt.

55. Receptive

7. "ER" setting

58. "_ _ _ be an honor!"

38. 6-pointers, briefly

8. "Bodak Yellow" rapper

39. Complete beginners, slangily

9. Sussex secondary school exam

59. 1955 merger with the AFL

41. It may offer couples packages

10. Compliment from a tennis opponent

42. Pressure-driven apparatuses

11. User interface

27. Entity that manages composers' intellectual property

49. Last half of a ball game?

50. Alley group 51. "Fiddlesticks!"

12. Drafting tools 15. Was winning 18. "Happy Birthday" playwright Anita

©2022 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ990.

46. Chrissy of "This Is Us" 48. Taken dishonestly 52. Tackle box line

last week’s answers

best behavior," wrote Gemini author Colleen McCullough. "It brings out the absolute worst in me." In the coming weeks, I hope you avoid the danger she describes. Don't be on your best behavior! Emulate Gemini filmmaker Clint Eastwood, who said, "I tried being reasonable, but I didn't like it." APRIL FOOL! I lied. Here's the real truth: Being kind and generous and reasonable will be your secret weapon in the next three weeks. Doing so will empower you to make interesting and unforeseen progress.

CANCER

(June 21-July 22): A Tumblr blogger named Alyssa complains, "I'm still peeved that I can't fly or set things on fire with my mind." You might share that feeling, Cancerian. But here's the good news: I predict that you could soon acquire, at least temporarily, the power to fly and set things on fire with your mind. Use these talents wisely, please! APRIL FOOL! I lied. In fact, you probably won't be able to fly or set things on fire with your mind anytime soon. However, you may acquire other superpowers that are only slightly less fantastic. For example, you could change the mind of an ally who has been ridiculously stubborn. You could uncover a big secret that has been hidden. You could mend a wound you thought would never heal. Any other superpowers you need right now?

LEO

(July 23-Aug. 22): I suspect that only a Leo would say what Leo filmmaker Stanley Kubrick once asserted: "You know, it's not absolutely true in every case that nobody likes a smart ass." In accordance with astrological omens, I authorize you to prove his assertion. Be the kind of smart ass that people like. APRIL FOOL! I'm halfjoking. The truth is, I hope you will be the kind of smart ass that people absolutely adore and get inspired by.

VIRGO

(Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In honor of your arrival in the most lyrical and soulful phase of your cycle, I offer you advice from poet Richard Jackson: "The secret is to paint your own numbers on the clock, to brush away those webs that cover the wild country of the soul, to let your star hover between the flowers of the moon and the flowers of the sun, like words you have never spoken yet always hear." APRIL FOOL! I partially lied. I don't think you should paint your own numbers on the clock. But the rest of what Jackson said is totally applicable and useful for you.

LIBRA

(Sept. 23-Oct. 22): "I want excitement," declared Libra novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, "and I don't care what form it takes or what I pay for it, so long as it makes my heart beat." In the coming weeks, I hope you will make that statement

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© 2022 ROB BREZSNY

your motto. APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. While I do foresee you being able to gather a wealth of excitement, I hope you won't be as extreme as Fitzgerald in your pursuit of it. There will be plenty of opportunities for excitement that won't require you to risk loss or pay an unwelcome price.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): "If you can't make fun

of yourself, you don't have a right to make fun of others," said comedian Joan Rivers. I agree!

So if you are feeling an irresistible urge to mock people and fling sarcasm in all directions, please prepare by first mocking yourself and being sarcastic toward yourself. APRIL FOOL! I lied.

I will never authorize you to make fun of others.

Never! In the coming weeks, I hope you'll do the opposite: Dole out massive doses of praise and appreciation toward everyone. To prepare, dole out massive doses of praise and appreciation toward yourself.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In the traditional

opera performed in China's Sichuan province, magical effects were popular. One trick involved characters making rapid changes of their masks.

The art was to remove an existing mask and don a new one with such speed that the audience could not detect it. An old master, Peng Denghuai, once wore 14 different masks in 24 seconds. This is an antic I think you should imitate in the coming days. The more frequently you alter your persona and appearance, the more successful and popular you'll be. APRIL FOOL! I half-lied. I recommend that you gleefully experiment with your image and exuberantly vary your self-presentation. But don't overdo it.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): A nutritionist

named Mark Haub decided to try losing weight by eating only sugary treats. For 10 weeks, he snacked on junk food cakes, cookies, and sweet cereals. By the end, he had lost 27 pounds. In accordance with astrological omens, I suggest you try the metaphorical equivalents of this project. For instance, work on deepening your relationships by engaging your allies in shallow conversations about trivial subjects. Or see if you can enhance your physical fitness by confining your exercise to crossing and uncrossing your legs as you sit on the couch watching TV. APRIL FOOL! I lied. Here's your real horoscope: For the next four weeks, take better care of your body and your relationships than you ever have before in your life. Make it a point to educate yourself about what that would entail, and be devoted in providing the most profound nurturing you can imagine.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarius-born Gior-

dano Bruno (1548–1600) was bravely heretical in his work as a philosopher, poet, mathematician, and friar. He angered the Catholic Church with his unorthodox views about Jesus and Mary, as well as his belief in reincarnation, his practice of occult magic, and his views that there are other stars besides our sun. Eventually, the authorities burned him at the stake for his transgressive ideas. Beware of a similar outcome for expressing your unusual qualities! APRIL FOOL! Luckily, no punishment will result if you express the rich fullness of your idiosyncrasies in the coming weeks. I'm happy about that, since I'm encouraging you to be as eccentrically yourself as you want to be.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Life is too complicated

to accurately comprehend. There's too much to know! It's impossible to make truly savvy and rational decisions. Maybe the best strategy is to flip a coin or throw the dice or draw a Tarot card before doing anything. APRIL FOOL! While it's a fact that life is too complex for our conscious minds to fully master, we have massive resources available on subconscious and superconscious levels: our deep soul and our higher self. Now is an excellent time to enhance your access to these mother lodes of intelligence.

Homework: What's the most compassionate prank you could perform?

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