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WWEEK.COM
VOL 37/45 09.14.2011
2011 FALL ARTS PREVIEW PAGE 15
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CONTENT
$67 Fall New Patient Special! *Now through Sept 30, 2011
Call today to reserve your time!
PUBLIC PAYDAYS: New records obtained by WW detail what city and county employees earn. Page 12.
NEWS
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LEAD STORY
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MUSIC
33
CULTURE
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MOVIES
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FOOD & DRINK
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Kelly J. Blodgett, DMD 522 SE Belmont www.blodgettdental.com
STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EDITORIAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Interim Arts & Culture Editor Ruth Brown Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Corey Pein Copy Chief Sarah Smith Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Rob Fernas Assistant Arts & Culture Editor Ben Waterhouse Movies Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Editorial Interns Emilee Booher, Emily Green, Brandon Hamilton, Reed Jackson, Maggie Summers, Annie Zak CONTRIBUTORS Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Food Kelly Clarke Visual Arts Richard Speer Erik Bader, Judge Bean, Nathan Carson, Devan Cook, Shane Danaher, Jonathan Frochtzwajg, Robert Ham, Jay Horton,
503 285 3620
Matthew Korfhage, AP Kryza, Hannah Levin, Jessica Lutjemeyer, Jeff Rosenberg, Shae Healey, Matt Singer, Chris Stamm, Mark Stock PRODUCTION Production Manager Kendra Clune Art Director Ben Mollica Graphic Designers Melissa Casillas, Soma Honkanen, Adam Krueger, Brittany Moody, Carolyn Richardson Production Interns Morgan Green-Hopkins, Lana MacNaughton ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Jane Smith Display Account Executives Sara Backus, Maria Boyer, Michael Donhowe, Drew Harrison, Janet Norman, Kyle Owens Classifieds Account Executives Ashlee Horton, Corin Kuppler Advertising Assistant Ashley Grether Marketing and Events Manager Jess Sword Marketing Coordinator Jose Tancuan Give!Guide Director Brittany Cornett Production Assistant Brittany McKeever
Our mission: Provide our audiences with an independent and irreverent understanding of how their worlds work so they can make a difference. Circulation: 80,000-90,000 (depending on time of year, holidays and vacations.) Though Willamette Week is free, please take just one copy. Anyone removing papers in bulk from our distribution points will be prosecuted, as they say, to the full extent of the law. Willamette Week is published weekly by City of Roses Newspaper Company 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Main line phone: (503) 243-2122 fax: (503) 243-1115 Classifieds phone: (503) 223-1500 fax: (503) 223-0388
DISTRIBUTION Circulation Director Robert Lehrkind WWEEK.COM Web Production Brian Panganiban Web Editor Ruth Brown MUSICFESTNW Executive Director Trevor Solomon No. 1 Roadie For Mott The Hoople Dan Winters OPERATIONS Accounting Manager Andrea Manning Credit & Collections Shawn Wolf Office Manager & Receptionist Nick Johnson Office Corgi Emeritus Bruce Manager of Information Systems Brian Panganiban Publisher Richard H. Meeker
Willamette Week welcomes freelance submissions. Send material to either News Editor or Arts Editor. Manuscripts will be returned if you include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. To be considered for calendar listings, notice of events must be received in writing by noon Wednesday, two weeks before publication. Send to Calendar Editor. Photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a selfaddressed, stamped envelope. Questions concerning circulation or subscription inquiries should be directed to Robert Lehrkind at Willamette Week. postmaster: Send all address changes to Willamette Week, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Subscription rates: One year $100, six months $50. Back issues $5 for walk-ins, $8 for mailed requests when available. Willamette Week is mailed at third-class rates.
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OMG tell me this is a joke: A 2011 cover story [“Mack to the Future,” WW, Sept. 7. 2011] about an emotional, white (shamelessly put to the forefront by the author) rapper complete with a he-had-black-friends photo (reinforced by the author!) & insightful critique from a 16-year old who whole-heartedly supports rhymes that deal with real things! —“curmudgeon”
QUESTIONING THE ‘FACTS’ OF 9/11
Comparing 9/11 footage, even indirectly, to a porno [“Never Remember,” WW, Sept. 7, 2011]? I think the author is the one who is out of touch as more and more Americans from all backgrounds question the story behind 9/11 we were spoon-fed. Hating on the style is one thing, but where is the actual journalism into the facts? Anyone who looks through facts must come to the same conclusion—that at the very least, the Commission Report and National Institute of Standards and Technology did not investigate thoroughly enough and there are more questions than answers when looked through a more objective lens. If a grass-roots film with low production value and rap music can get us thinking more and demanding a better investigation, then what’s the problem with that? Funny how we rely on these grass-roots movements for valid information. Remember—you cannot deny that the majority of those involved in the so-called investigations agree they are incomplete, faulty, and politically driven. As a New Yorker and an American I think we all deserve a much better report than what we have—and if you really support the troops who fight because of what happened that day and the families devastated by the attack, then you can’t really disagree, can you?
And the characterization of CGI in the photo.... Too bad the author doesn’t mention the footage’s purpose is not to make the viewer believe this is REAL FOOTAGE—which the films do not venture to say. Yes, a decision is left to the viewer, but it is clear that a dramatization is being done in the film after a conclusion that the events could not (likely) have happened the way they were described, and instead an alternative makes much more sense—which the entire segment built up to using facts and testimonial in which the viewer is left as the jury. Thanks for more biased, deadline crunched opinion pieces... —“Joe”
CITY SALARIES: THE STICKER SHOCK
When you have cops on the beat and firemen making six-figure salaries [“Who Are The Highest-Paid City of Portland Employees?” wweek. com, Sept. 8, 2011], it’s quite clear there is a problem with fiscal responsibility. And there are close to 600 city employees making over $100K? Did you say 600??? And a lot of them get to retire making more money than what they are making now?? I can’t fathom how these salaries are justified. I know...let’s grease some employee-benefit consulting firm into convincing our city officials that these pay levels are justified. And let’s not forget the county, state, and federal positions, too. And people wonder why we have a problem? —“rich” LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification. Letters must be 250 or fewer words. Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Fax: (503) 243-1115, Email: mzusman@wweek.com
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I gotta say, Dustin, something about your letter gives me the distinct impression that your “oral sex life” consists primarily of you discussing, orally, all the sex you’d like to be having. Not that you’re not in good (or at least numerous) company: The sex chatter of guys who aren’t getting laid is doubtless the single most popular form of shit-talking in our society. Since the shit-talking of non-vegans on the subject of what vegans should or shouldn’t eat is steadily closing the gap in second, that makes you practically a one-man focus group. I’ve gone vegan myself a couple of times, and I gotta say, the defensiveness this provokes in some members of the non-vegan population is striking: What you say: “Is the garden burger vegan?” What they hear: “J’accuse, you baby-raping
animal torturer! Justify, if you can, your morally inferior non-vegan existence!” The “do vegans swallow” question is mostly bandied about by these same defensive folks, who hope that by finding some logical or moral inconsistency in veganism, they can silence the little voice that says they’re one of the bad guys in a real-life Charlotte’s Web. Here’s the deal: The key point in moral or political veganism is not that the product comes from an animal per se, but rather that the animal is kept in a condition of servitude, providing its milk or honey against its will. Thus, if she kidnaps you and puts you in a cage (assuming you’re not into that kind of thing), and milks your honey over your protests, it’s not vegan. But if, as I suspect, you’d give it willingly— all too willingly—I’d say your all-too-hypothetical vegan girlfriend is in the clear. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-East Portland) said Tuesday he will run for mayor of Portland against former City Commissioner Charlie Hales and businesswoman Eileen Brady. Smith, 38, is a founder of the Bus Project, a get-out-the-vote group. He grew up in Irvington and won election to the House in 2008. Smith went viral this year for a Web video “rickrolling” SMITH state lawmakers. (If you don’t know what it means, Google it). He also helped organize a series of Candidates Gone Wild events with WW. “The city of Portland should be fun. Our campaigns should be fun. They should not be war,” Smith tells WW. “We should take our work very seriously, but we should not take ourselves very seriously.” The group that issued a discredited housing discrimination audit painting two-thirds of Portland landlords as biased has asked an outside expert to review its practices. The Fair Housing Council of Oregon has hired Anne Houghtaling, former director of investigations and enforcement for the National Fair Housing Alliance, to conduct the review. Records released under WW’s requests showed the audit was misleading, withheld evidence and exaggerated claims of discrimination. The Fair Housing Council will launch the review, says Executive Director Moloy Good, “to assure that our future work is of the highest quality and integrity.” A Bend orthopedic surgeon running for secretary of state is serious about raising big campaign money. Dr. Knute Buehler, a Republican, has pulled in $45,000 so far, mostly from local donors and some family members. Buehler, a former Oregon State baseball player and Rhodes Scholar, has hired fundraiser Lori Hardwick, who helped Republican Chris Dudley raise $10 million in his race for governor last year. Incumbent Secretary of State Kate Brown, a Portland Democrat, has not yet cranked up her cash machine. Because nothing says “nature” like a lithium-ion battery-powered radio transmitter controlled by an advanced microprocessor and encased in electrode-layered glass and plastic: The office of City Commissioner Nick Fish last week announced a new iPhone app designed to “improve your experience” at Forest Park. The app contains 10 maps of the park’s 80 miles of trails prepared by the Forest Park Conservancy. The app’s developer: Lincoln High School senior Dylan Gattey, 17. Reached on his lunch break, Gattey says he’s a self-taught programmer who came up with the app as a class project and then approached the conservancy. Gattey is applying to Brown, MIT and Wesleyan, and thinking about a major in computer science. Find the $3.99 app at forestparkpdxapp.info. Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.
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GOT A GOOD TIP? CALL 503.445.1542, OR EMAIL NEWSHOUND@WWEEK.COM
RICK BOWMER, AP
NEWS NOT PAYING HIS DUES
LABOR COMMISH BRAD AVAKIAN, NOW RUNNING FOR CONGRESS, HAS A RECORD OF PAYING TAXES LATE—AND HITTING UP LOBBYISTS FOR A JOB. BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
njaquiss@wweek.com
Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian may be the toughest candidate to beat in the 1st Congressional District special election to replace U.S. Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.). Avakian brings a robust political résumé to the contest—five years in the Oregon Legislature and nearly four more in statewide office enforcing civil rights and wage laws. The 50-year-old lawyer had already declared his intention to take on the seven-term incumbent Wu in the 2012 Democratic primary before Wu resigned last month. Avakian’s aggressive stance has given him an edge over his two principal opponents, state Rep. Brad Witt (D-Clatskanie) and state Sen. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Beaverton), who later joined the race. Avakian—in his initial fundraising report—raked in $195,000, a strong showing. Allies say Avakian has done well as labor commissioner, a low-profile political office charged with overseeing apprenticeship programs, pursuing deadbeat employers and enforcing civil rights laws. “Brad has done a superb job,” says former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who’s endorsed Avakian. “He has done a marvelous job of paying attention to all of those issues.” But Avakian also faces questions about his personal finances and his ethical judgment. While a legislator in 2005, Avakian asked lobbyists to help him find a job, sending them an email request with his résumé attached, according to records obtained by WW. Records show Avakian twice failed to pay his taxes, in one case incurring a $13,000 federal tax lien. The Oregon State Bar briefly suspended his license when he failed to pay his bar dues. And four creditors have sued him over unpaid bills—including a creditor who took him to small claims court last year after he failed to pay a medical bill. Avakian tells WW he doesn’t recall writing the email to lobbyists. But he does recall telling lobbyists and Portland lawyers he was closing his law firm and looking for other opportunities, and he says he sees no problem with doing so. He says he doesn’t recall the details of the court cases but acknowledges running into financial trouble in the past—including when he had his wife, Debbie, on his legislative payroll at $4,500 a month, as he did in 2005. He says he’s made good on all his past debts. “Debbie and I have had some really good times and struggled at some times,” Avakian says. “A lot of people I’ve helped have hard times, too.” An Eagle Scout, Avakian grew up in Aloha and wrestled at Oregon State (as a svelte 151-pounder), where he earned a psychology degree. He counseled juvenile offenders for four years before enrolling at Lewis & Clark Law School. He practiced law in Portland for 15 years, for a time as partner with ex-Portland City Commissioner Jim Francesconi. Avakian lost a 1998 state Senate race but then won a House seat representing Beaverton in 2002. He claimed a vacant Senate seat four years later.
MOVING ON UP?: Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian at his April announcement that he would run for the First Congressional District seat.
Avakian chaired the Senate Environment Committee and led the passage of Oregon’s nationally recognized renewable energy standard, which calls for 25 percent of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025. He says his candidacy is a logical step in a career characterized by an ability to bring diverse groups together for a common goal—whether pushing through Oregon’s renewable energy standard or finding common ground on civil unions, both of which he helped do in 2007. “The 1st Congressional District is my home and where I grew up,” Avakian says. “Currently in Washington, campaigns never end. What I’ve shown throughout my career is when the race is over, I have the ability to forget campaigning and govern.” Avakian considered running for governor and attorney general before launching a campaign for secretary of state in 2008. He was running far back in a four-way primary
race when Labor Commissioner Dan Gardner resigned. Then-Gov. Ted Kulongoski named Avakian to fill the post. As labor commissioner, Avakian has had a few highprofile cases, including an investigation into sexual harassment allegations against John Minnis, a former legislator and chief of the state’s police training and standards agency. And he has taken on the Typhoon! restaurant chain for allegedly mistreating Thai chefs. His agency also chases down deadbeat employers who have failed to pay their workers. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries conducts more than 5,000 workplace investigations a year, and on Avakian’s watch has recovered more than $11 million for workers who got stiffed. Avakian hasn’t always paid his own bills promptly, however. Records show a collection agency sued Avakian CONT. on page 8 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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POLITICS
in Washington County court last year over $461 he owed to the Portland Clinic. In 2005, creditors sued Avakian in small claims court: twice in Multnomah County and once Marion County. No claim was for more than $800. In each case, the bills had gone unpaid for so long they had been turned over to collection agencies. In 2003, the Oregon State Bar briefly suspended Avakian’s license for failing to pay his bar dues. A spokeswoman for the bar declined to say how frequently that happens, but lawyers say the bar sends numerous requests for payment prior to suspension. Avakian was outspoken in his support for higher funding for K-12 education as a lawmaker. In 2010, he supported Measures 66 and 67, two state tax increases voters passed. Records show Avakian hasn’t always paid his own taxes on time. In 2005, the Internal Revenue Service filed a $13,120 lien against Avakian for unpaid federal income taxes. Avakian says the lien dated back to 2002, when he was focused on politics rather than his law practice. He fell behind on a payment plan, the IRS issued a lien, and he refinanced his house to pay it off. Washington County records show that Avakian failed to pay his property taxes of about $4,000 in 2006. He paid them seven months late, incurring interest charges of about $500. Avakian says he has no recollection of that omission but thinks it might have been related to a snafu at his mortgage company, which was supposed to include his taxes in his monthly
“IT WOULD BE INAPPROPRIATE TO USE MY PUBLIC POSITION FOR PERSONAL GAIN. THAT WAS NOT THE INTENT, NOR WAS IT THE RESULT.” —BRAD AVAKIAN payment. “As soon as we found the taxes weren’t being paid, we made sure the balance was made up,” he says. Jim Moore, a Pacific University political science professor, says Avakian’s repeated failure to pay his bills is concerning. “It looks like a pattern,” Moore says. “And the pattern becomes troubling because he is holding businesses and taxpayers to a standard that he has trouble meeting himself.” Moore notes Avakian is hardly the first politician who has struggled financially. The danger, Moore notes, is that cashstrapped politicians have often leaned on lobbyists and others for financial favors. “It may be that he’s just somebody who has trouble making his private finances work,” he says. Avakian says the difference between his current BOLI salary—$72,000—and a congressman’s $174,000 salary was not a factor in his decision to run. As a lawmaker, Avakian was vocal about the hardship of serving in Salem; legislators now get about $21,000 annually, plus $105 per day when in session. At the end of the 2005 session, he sent an email from his personal account seeking lobbyists’ help in landing a job. “Now that the session has ended, I have decided not to return to my employment/business law practice,” Avakian wrote in August 2005. “Instead, I am looking to make a transition now to something else, legal or administrative. If you come across any opportunities, please give me a call at [Avakian’s phone number]. Attached is a résumé which you may feel free to pass on.” Oregon ethics law prohibits using one’s public office for private gain. Avakian defends his job-seeking request to lobbyists. “I think the email was appropriate,” he says. “It would be inappropriate to use my public position for personal gain. That was not the intent, nor was it the result.” Now Avakian is in the biggest race of his life. And while he got in earlier than Bonamici and enjoys greater name recognition than Witt, neither of his competitors has made a habit of winding up in small claims court. Avakian says the totality of his public service—including his management of his agency’s $24 million biennial budget—far outweighs a few unpaid bills. “In the end, I’ve always paid my obligations,” he says. “I think constituents are much more interested in the jobs and training programs I’ve created, and the work I’ve done for them.”
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CITY HALL
THE CAMPAIGN CASH TRAIL FINANCIAL REPORTS FOR THE MAYOR’S RACE SHOW KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CHARLIE HALES AND EILEEN BRADY. BY CO R E Y P E I N
cpein@wweek.com
Even the joyless, pitiful souls who spent this summer paying attention to a City Hall election still seven months away struggle to handicap the two top mayoral candidates, Charlie Hales and Eileen Brady. Another candidate, state Rep. Jefferson Smith (D-East Portland), entered the race on Sept. 13. Hales served a decade on the City Council and championed the Portland Streetcar before leaving office early in 2002. Brady, a first-time candidate, is a board member of a nonprofit and a businesswoman who helped co-found New Seasons Market. An early poll showed their favorability numbers are about the same (“Why Sam Adams Drifted Away,” WW, Aug. 3, 2011). Just as important, they’re very close in fundraising. By Sept. 12—only a few days after the candidates could officially file at the City Auditor’s Office—Brady had already raised $177,000; Hales, $155,000. Smith has a deficit of $3,400 in his legislative campaign account. All three expect an expensive race—probably more than $1 million. In interviews with WW, Hales and Brady said they do not intend to voluntarily cap their campaign contributions, as some candidates have in the past. Smith says he will refuse out-of-state donations from corporations and organizations (such as unions). “The race for mayor should not be an auction,” Smith says. For all their superficial similarities, however, a close look at Hales’ and Brady’s campaign finance reports reveals some important distinctions. Hales has pulled in bigger donations and snagged more money from out-of-state donors, leaning heavily on his business connections and links to mass transit. Brady has so far raised more than Hales by collecting far more small contributions and by attracting more donations from women. In this race, it’s the really big checks—far bigger than federal campaign spending limits would allow—that have fueled both campaigns. Brady’s biggest donations have come in at $10,000: from New Seasons co-founder Stan Amy; and PM Financial Services, a mortgage company owned by Darla and Kali Placencia in the Chicago area, where Brady grew up. Five-digit donations may start to look small in Portland. Hales already has two $25,000 donors: investor David Nierenberg of Camas, Wash., and California-based contractor Stacy & Witbeck, which has laid light rail and streetcar tracks all over Portland. Brady has made up for slightly smaller checks with a donor base that’s three times as large as Hales’, although both draw from a similar pool of executives, investors, attorneys and other whitecollar professionals. Perhaps more important, Brady’s donors also include a much greater share of women. According to a recent Riley Research Associates poll, Portland women are not only a slightly bigger share of registered voters, they are much more
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(44) 0 $590 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 $1,970 (9) 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
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3000 3000
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HALES
PERCENTAGE OF DONORS FROM OUT OF STATE: 15%
19%
AVERAGE OUT-OF-STATE DONATION $1,240 $6,720
AVERAGE DONATION FROM WITHIN THE CITY OF PORTLAND $700 $1,260 … FROM NORTHWEST PORTLAND (No. of donors)
… FROM SOUTHWEST PORTLAND $620
(56)
$1,190
(19)
… FROM NORTHEAST PORTLAND $1,060 $490
(21) (4)
… FROM SOUTHEAST PORTLAND $840
(18)
$810
(13)
… FROM NORTH PORTLAND $364
(4)
$500
(1)
PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE DONORS
32%
17%
likely to vote. It may have helped that Brady won a crucial endorsement from EMILY’s List, a national political action committee that rallies donors for pro-choice Democratic women. On Sept. 2, Hales is throwing a fundraiser with prominent female supporters in Southeast Portland. See interactive maps of every City Hall campaign donor. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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NEWS
LOCAL GOVERNMENT DANIEL ZENDER
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PUBLIC PAYDAYS CITY AND COUNTY WORKERS AREN’T GETTING RICH—BUT THEY’RE DOING BETTER THAN THEIR NEIGHBORS. BY COR EY PEIN
cpein@wweek.com
Mayor Sam Adams and other local leaders want to attract renewed attention to growing economic disparities across the city (“Equally Confused,” WW, Aug. 31, 2011). There’s one gap they may prefer not to dwell on: The relatively attractive compensation of local public employees compared to the rest of us. The median household income in Portland is roughly $47,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. New public data obtained by WW show that the majority of city of Portland and Multnomah County employees are doing better individually than most Portland households. Records show the median annual pay for a city employee is $51,400; at the county, $53,600. At least 772 city and county employees make more than $100,000 a year, not counting benefits. That’s about 6 percent of the county and city workforce combined. While that won’t exactly get them an invite to Davos, Aspen or even the Multnomah Athletic Club, it does clearly place them among what’s left of the city’s middle and upper-middle classes. The numbers also indicate that workers in some departments do better than those elsewhere in the bureaucracy. The Portland Fire Bureau, for instance, pays management and senior union workers better than even the overtime-friendly Portland Police Bureau. The pay figures for these local government workers do not include their health benefits or contributions to their Oregon Public Employees Retirement System pensions. The greatest disparity these public pay numbers reveal may be how few Portlanders could actually make the cut for good government jobs. More than half of Portlanders over 25 have not completed so much as an associate’s degree—which tends to limit their earning potential, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis.
Better-paid public employees tend to have advanced degrees (including M.D.s and J.D.s.) or professional certifications (including police officers and firefighters). Last week, WW published the salary data for 9,000 city employees—and a table of the bestpaid among them—at wweek.com/citypay. This week, we publish the numbers on 4,600 county employees at wweek.com/countypay. Some words of caution: The city and county report their numbers differently, so that prevents a reliable apples-to-apples comparison. For instance, the county’s salary list doesn’t tally each employee’s earned overtime; the city’s does. The county also accounts separately for more than 1,150 on-call employees, who make between $9.50 and $90 an hour (animal-care aide on one end, dentists on the other). We’ll update the info online as we obtain more. Meanwhile, here are some examples of what we found:
City of Portland
Multnomah County
EMPLOYEES ON PAYROLL:
9,044
4,656 TOTAL PAYROLL:
$418 million
$261 million
MEDIAN SALARY:
$51,400
$53,600
PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYEES WHO MAKE OVER $100,000:
7
4
BUREAU OR DEPARTMENT WITH THE MOST EMPLOYEES PAID $100,000 +:
Fire Bureau (151)
Health Department (59)
See a list of the highest-paid employees—and salaries of 13,700 public workers.
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ADAM SORENSEN’S TABERNACLE
BRING ON THE RAIN DAYGLO LANDSCAPES, FERAL CHILDREN, KILLER CHORUSES AND MORE ART TO KEEP YOU SANE THIS FALL. BY BRE TT CA MPB ELL, R ICHA R D SPEER , B EN WATER HOU SE A N D HEATHER WIS N ER
The day is coming, not long from now, when you will have to go inside. This idyllic September warmth will end and the clouds will return, and we will all begin to fortify ourselves against the long, dark November of the soul. And what will we do with ourselves through the short, grim days that await us? Why, patronize the arts, my friend. Here are four artists whose work we think will light a fire in your heart to keep you warm right through winter. FALL ARTS CONT. on page 16
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VISUAL ARTS C H R I S T I N E TAY L O R
World Forestry Center
FALL ARTS PREVIEW
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ADAM SORENSEN IN HIS STUDIO TM
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Jan. 20-22, 2012
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AT THE APEX WITH HIS FANTASTICAL LANDSCAPE PAINTINGS, ADAM SORENSEN IS ON THE CUSP OF BREAKOUT SUCCESS. For artists who have made it in Oregon—and by almost any criteria Adam Sorensen has—the next question is: Can success here lead to success outside the Portland bubble? For Sorensen, the answer seems to be a resounding yes. The 35-year-old painter is an overnight success more than a decade in the making, with artistic irons in the fire both locally and nationally. Sorensen’s new show at the Portland Art Museum, APEX: Adam Sorensen, showcases six new oil paintings, among them the largest painting of his career. That work, a behemoth called Tabernacle, is nearly 7 feet high and 10 feet wide: a fantastical mountain landscape with no human beings in sight, the peaks and rolling hills dotted with glowing rocks, the valleys limpid with waterfalls, rivers and lakes. It’s an Edenic paradise in danger of being discovered and despoiled. You can easily picture a real-estate developer sizing up the scene: “Ah, put a strip mall over here, a condo tower there, a Macaroni Grill in the valley, and parking lots everywhere!” The looming threat of exploitation lends the vistas a sense of the sinister. (A small portion of the painting appears on the cover of this issue.)
“The colors I use have all these bright and joyful connotations,” Sorensen says, “but overall, the paintings don’t give off a sunny feeling. There’s a sort of eeriness that comes through.” Sorensen’s gallerist, Jane Beebe of PDX Contemporary Art, sums up Tabernacle more dramatically: “It’s operatic! When you see it, you’ll faint!” Born in Chicago, the artist grew up in Gettysburg, Pa., eventually moving to upstate New York to study art at Alfred University. In 1999 he followed two fellow Alfred alums to Portland, attracted to the accessibility of the art scene and the proximity to the majestic Cascades, which fuel his work. After being represented by Elizabeth Leach for several years, he moved to PDX Contemporary, where he works a day job as gallery assistant. This past year, his work has become noticeably more visible outside Oregon, with an exhibition in San Antonio, representation in Seattle at the Jim Harris Gallery, and a major piece sold last September to the Boise Art Museum. He is also a finalist for a $25,000 grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, named after the late abstract expressionist. “I’ve definitely had the opportunity to concentrate more lately,” he says. “It’s gotten more serious. I feel like I’m finally an established regional artist, and now, the next opportunity exists outside the Northwest.” He pauses with a modesty that belies his upward trajectory, then adds, “We’ll see how that works.” RICHARD SPEER. SEE IT: APEX: Adam Sorensen at Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-2811, portlandartmuseum.org. Closes Jan. 1, 2012.
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MORE VISUAL ARTS Ellen George at PDX Contemporary Art
Polymer clay, glass, watercolors, stickpins, silk ribbons—these are just a few of the media that sculptor Ellen George uses in her fanciful, endlessly inventive works. George has a gift for creating visually poetic allegories that toy with the lines between abstraction, representation and symbolism. You can’t always put your finger on what individual pieces “mean,” but they always speak in a language that somehow the soul understands. 925 NW Flanders St., pdxcontemporaryart. com. Nov. 1-26.
Body Gesture at Elizabeth Leach Gallery
It has been four decades and counting since the feminist movement barrelled into the American mainstream and empowered women to perform acts of political theater (bra-burning, anyone?) and more meaningful achievements such as breaking through the glass ceiling. Body Gesture spotlights art across a variety of media by an array of feminist artists. Hannah Wilke, Andrea Bowers, Alice Neel and Martha Rosler show us how far women have come since the 1970s and how much work toward equality remains. 417 NW 9th Ave., elizabethleach. com. Nov. 3-Dec. 31.
Jim Riswold at Augen Gallery
Photographer Jim Riswold combines impeccable technique with a wryly mischievous irreverence. Who else could use Adolf Hitler and Jesus Christ as subject matter with equal aplomb and still stay on the discreet side of good taste? For his next outing at Augen, Riswold tackles World War I. Appropriately for an artist whose titles are at least half the fun, this show is entitled The War to End All Wars that Didn’t End All Wars. 716 NW Davis St., augengallery.com. Nov. 3-26.
FALL ARTS CONT. on page 18
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CLASSICAL AND WORLD MUSIC BRIANLEEPHOTO.COM
FALL ARTS PREVIEW
ETHAN SPERRY AT WORK
THE CHORUS KING ETHAN SPERRY IS SHAKING UP PORTLAND’S SINGERS. “Choral music at Portland State, and indeed in Portland, is back!” bellowed a beaming Bruce Browne, beloved retired director of the PSU chamber choir, at the school’s remarkable reunion concert in May 2010. Browne wasn’t the only one in the audience blown away by the performances of the student singers that day in a program that included music from Latvia, an Indian raga, an English Renaissance piece and a traditional Haitian song that had singers and audience grinning and swaying throughout. The concert and reunion were conceived and executed by PSU’s new director of choral studies, Ethan Sperry, who was also recently named to succeed another Portland choral legend, Gil Seeley, as director of the Oregon Repertory Singers. Sperry’s accomplishments in his first year at PSU include a marvelous series of tributes to choral composer Morten Lauridsen, adding new choirs and beefing up the existing ones. His successes, along with those of other new choirs, herald a resurgence of Portland’s choral scene. At PSU, Sperry’s students not only demonstrate vocal achievements rarely heard in college choirs, they also forge an emotional connection to audiences. “I’ve seen a lot of classical concerts where the musicians are delivering technique and not delivering the music,” Sperry says. “The audience picks up on that. Part of the reason classical music seems stuffy is that they’re just hitting the notes.” He wants his choirs to transcend that “cultural stigma” and show that “experimental and edgy” choral music “shares a lot with what Portland and Northwest artists enjoy. ” Although he insists on technical mastery, Sperry also invests considerable time helping singers understand and elucidate the meaning composers are trying to convey. He encourages emotional responses that bring music to life. “Most people go to concerts because they want to have fun and have an emotional connection with the music or with the performers,” he explains. “Our goal is to communicate with the audience and give them an emotional experience. Getting the notes right helps, but that’s not the goal of the performance. There’s always another note you can get just right. If your goal in concert is to communicate and share, then you can be really happy with what you accomplished.” BRETT CAMPBELL. HEAR IT: Oregon Repertory Singers welcomes Sperry at Renewal, at 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 15, at Lincoln Hall at PSU, 1620 SE Park Ave., and 7:30 pm Sunday, Oct. 16, at First United Methodist Church, 1838 SW Jefferson St. Tickets at 230-0652. 18
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
MORE CLASSICAL AND WORLD MUSIC Oregon Symphony, Dawn Upshaw
One of the most compelling and adventurous singers alive returns to join the orchestra in Benjamin Britten’s The Illuminations and American songs and music by Gershwin and Walton. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, orsymphony.org. 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 1. $25-$90.
Fear No Music presents A Piano Riot!
Multiple pianos and percussion combine in music by contemporary South African/California composer Shaun Naidoo, Lutoslawski and the four-piano version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., fearnomusic.org. 8 pm Sunday, Oct. 9. Ticket price TBA.
Third Angle, One Mississippi
In late 2009, the experimentalist/ postminimalist New York composer Eve Beglarian spent more than four months paddling and pedaling down the Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans, talking to and performing for people who live along the way, recording the sounds she heard and writing music that reflected the journey. The Northwest’s finest new music ensemble and the superb musicians of Eugene’s Beta Collide will play it, plus a new work, Third Angle, commissioned from Beglarian. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., thirdangle.org. 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 21. $30.
Portland Chamber Orchestra presents Halloween Monsterbash
The ensemble celebrates Halloween with the Northwest premiere of German composer HK Gruber’s wild “pandemonium for singer and ensemble,” Frankenstein!!, plus the world premiere of electronica composer Duncan Neilson’s animation-enhanced The Monster, which tells the Frankenstein story from the monster’s perspective. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., portlandchamberorchestra.org. 7:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 22. $15-$20.
So Percussion
Friends of Chamber Music brings the New York ensemble back to town for an early celebration of John Cage’s centenary. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 Woodstock Blvd., focm. org, 7:30 pm Monday, Oct. 24. $14-$40.
FALL ARTS CONT. on page 20
PAGE 51
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THEATER C H R I S T I N E TAY L O R
FALL ARTS PREVIEW
SETH NEHIL ON THE SET OF CHILDREN’S GAMES
BUMPS IN THE NIGHT SETH NEHIL’S ALIEN SOUNDSCAPES MEET NIGHTMARISH VIDEO IN CHILDREN’S GAMES.
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
OCAC_May11.indd 1
8/31/11 11:20 AM
“I’ve been really enjoying metal for a while,” Seth Nehil said, sipping a black coffee on the patio of a North Killingsworth Street coffeehouse. He wasn’t talking about Slayer. “It’s so resonant,” he said. “Depending on how you strike it or manipulate it, it can either resonate or be really dull. It has a lot of possibilities.” Nehil, a composer of the musique concrète school, makes a regular habit of striking and manipulating found objects and instruments, chopping up the resulting noises and recombining them into intricate recordings that sound, to my ears, like Gregorian monks rehearsing inside mechanical anthills. The sounds on his most recent album, Knives, came from “leather, blown pipes, ice shards, signal generator, drum kit, drum machine, clapping, breaking glass, bowed acoustic guitar, plucked and bowed hammer dulcimer, Fender Rhodes, snapping twigs, piano, feedback, stones, and field recordings of freezing rain on plastic, a rushing stream, a market in Kyoto,” among other sources, according to the liner notes. This is a man who likes listening. In recent years, Nehil has moved beyond the borders of his recording studio in audio-visual collaborations with dancers and singers. His latest and most ambitious venture, Children’s Games, moves further into the realm of performance with a spooky video piece, shot by Dicky Dahl, accompanied by live music. The pieces of the work that Nehil has posted to his blog (sethnehil.blogspot.com) are promising: Filthy play in the woods; a white-walled classroom and a blackboard covered in mysterious scrawl; fire; distant howling and scratching. “I find that often a project is conceived in an instant,” Nehil said. Specifically, Children’s Games emerged from a single issue of The New York Times, in which he says he read both a review of Piers Dudgeon’s Neverland: J. M. Barrie, The Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan and a piece on runaway teenagers living on the outskirts of Medford. These stories, combined with Nehil’s fascination with François Truffaut’s film The Wild Child and Pieter Bruegel’s painting “Children’s Games,” have percolated over the course of the past two years into a dark pseudonarrative about a feral child, captured and trained by a scientist, who finds himself caught in a “cinematic nightmare.” The soundtrack to the nightmare is music composed by Nehil
DICKY DAHL
A SCENE FROM CHILDREN’S GAMES
for a six-voice improvisational chorus and an electric noise band, and by Golden Retriever’s Matt Carlson for a violin-viola-synthesizer trio, along with some of Nehil’s usual robo-insect-angel recordings. Nehil himself will sing with the chorus, through what he calls a “broken Radio Shack microphone plugged into a distortion pedal.” The sum of it all should be thoroughly unsettling. “I’ve been listening to the way the voice is used in horror films, which is often grunting and screaming and shouting,” Nehil said. “I think we have a desire to hear those kind of things. We legitimize it though putting it in horror films. It has a reason there, so we feel OK.” We suspect Children’s Games will leave us feeling anything but OK. BEN WATERHOUSE. SEE IT: Children’s Games at the Mouth Studio, 810 SE Belmont St., sethnehil.artdocuments.org. Friday-Sunday, Oct. 28-30 and Nov. 4-6. Ticket price TBD.
MORE THEATER Oklahoma!
Portland Center Stage’s advance publicity for its big fall musical has focused on director Chris Coleman’s gimmick—the cast, with the exception of “Persian” peddler Ali Hakim, is all black. While some superfans may find the idea unsettling, I don’t think it will change the spirit of the show. Coleman could have cast only obese Japanese cosplayers, but the strangeness of the concept would still be outweighed by the central weirdness of Oscar Hammerstein’s plot. If you pay attention to Oklahoma!—but who pays attention to musicals?— you’ll find a dark, unsettling story of absurdist sexual politics. Coleman’s cast, almost all newcomers to PCS, have impressive résumés. Barring egregious directorial error, it should be a great show. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700, pcs.org. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays, Sept. 20-Oct. 30, with alternating Saturday matinee and Sunday evening performances. $44-$69, $25 students.
No Man’s Land
Artists Rep brings back genuine famous person William Hurt for his fourth show with the Portland company, this time with his son in tow, in a production of Harold Pinter’s strange play about a pair of heavy-drinking old men (played by Hurt and Artists Rep’s artistic director, Allen Nause) who engage in a sort of mnemonic combat, trading at least partially invented memories and lamenting the general decline of things. It’s a comedy, but not a hopeful one. Hurt’s particular brand of grumbling should be well suited to the role of Spooner. Portland favorite Tim True is also in the cast. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278, artistsrep. org. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays, Oct. 4-Nov. 6. $25-$60.
The Pain and the Itch
Third Rail Rep’s first production of the season is a brutal comedy by Bruce Norris about a very unpleasant Thanksgiving dinner with a family of self-righteous NPR-listener types: a young couple, their non-speaking daughter, his condescending mother and drunken-doctor brother and the brother’s Russian girlfriend. And a taxi driver, Mr. Hadid, whose life they turn upside down. Third Rail has a history of excellent productions of very funny plays about very mean people. Given the strength of the cast—Valerie Stevens, Damon Kupper, Jacklyn Maddux, Amy Beth Frankel, Duffy Epstein and John San Nicholas— this one should be no exception. Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 235-1101, thirdrailrep. org. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays, Oct. 14-30. $29.50$38.50.
Glengarry Glen Ross
Defunkt Theatre excels at producing the sort of plays no company that had to worry about getting butts in seats would touch. Plays, like Mac Wellman’s Crowtet, that divide audiences into camps: bored, confused, afraid. So it seems strange, given the company’s obscure and challenging history, that defunkt should tackle a classic of such stature as Mamet’s 1984 real-estate drama. There must be a twist, you think, and of course there is: Defunkt has cast women in the lead men’s roles. Interesting! What’s next? Alec Baldwin in The Skriker? The Back Door Theatre, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 418-2960. 8 pm Thursdays-Sundays, Oct. 14-Nov. 19. $20.
FALL ARTS CONT. on page 23 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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FALL ARTS PREVIEW
GIDEON OBARZANEK
GIVE UP THE CHUNK CHUNKY MOVE GETS GRACEFUL. When Gideon Obarzanek founded the Melbourne, Australiabased dance company Chunky Move in 1995, the name seemed fitting. “My movement, compared to other companies, seemed quite brutal,” he says. But the name tells only part of the story: Along with movement that he describes as “animalistic, extending the body into a creaturelike state,” Obarzanek makes dances with mechanical precision, steps that shift the body in unexpected ways and productions with characters, narrative and storytelling. Over time, he has become known for theatrical and visually striking multimedia work. We saw why when the company made its White Bird debut in 2004 with Tense Dave, which featured simultaneous narratives unspooling on a revolving set, and again in 2009, when the troupe returned with Two Faced Bastard, in which the dancers played rough with each other and the furniture. On its third Portland visit, as part of a White Bird series, Chunky Move will launch the North American premiere of Connected, wherein Obarzanek links these elements through a single set piece: an enormous undulating “wave” sculpture, created by Berkeley sculptor Reuben Margolin. It’s suspended over the stage by wires and looks like the controls of a giant, unmanned puppet. The five dancers in the piece become attached to it—literally—and as they move in and around the sculpture they form increasingly complex relationships with it and each other. Margolin, whose specialty is nature-inspired kinetic sculptures, had never worked with dancers before but was intrigued by the idea. “The human body is so dynamic and expressive, and thinking about how to work with this range of movement is what made this collaboration both exciting and challenging,” he says. “Gideon wanted to build the sculpture onstage, and so I designed magnetic joints, so that the dancers could snap the paper elements together as part of the performance.” Despite the logistical challenges of bodies and wires and long-distance collaborating, Obarzanek calls the results “beautiful.” “Even though there’s a lot of mathematics, it’s a very human experience, a human work,” he says. “We’re really trying to show the relationship between moving bodies and kinetic sculpture and how one influences the other, and how we look at the human body through an inanimate object.” Production elements meet CHUNKY MOVE CONT. on page 24 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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DANCE CONT. JEFF BUSBY
FREE WILL
FALL ARTS PREVIEW
astrology
CHUNKY MOVE’S CONNECTED
offstage as well: Connected’s sound (which includes recordings of gallery guards expressing their views on art) is linked to a lighting console through a computer, so, Obarzanek says, “Often, the music controls the lighting, so you get a sense of what the sound looks like.” Connected is a radical creation—nothing chunky about it. HEATHER WISNER.
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SEE IT: White Bird presents Chunky Move at Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave., 245-1600, whitebird.org. 8 pm ThursdaySaturday, Oct. 20-22. $20-$30.
MORE DANCE Fill Your Dance Card
VISUAL ARTS
GALLERY LISTINGS AND MORE! PAGE 50 24
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
Fall in Portland has always meant a performance crush, as local dance groups stage overlapping events. This year, some of these folks have smartly packaged their shows together as Fill Your Dance Card, a punch card, available in the lobbies of participating organizations, that earns prizes for each show you attend: See two shows by two organizations, get a $20 gift certificate for a local restaurant; see three shows, get another $20; see four or more and you’re entered to win dinner, a show and a hotel stay. It’s an appetizing offer—you’ve gotta eat, after all—in an already tasty dance season: BodyVox is up first, with Horizontal Leanings, a moving exploration of community and culture (Sept. 29-Oct. 15, bodyvox.com). White Bird follows with the shape-shifting, perennially popular Pilobolus (Oct. 5, whitebird.org), while Portland’s Polaris Dance Theatre stages iChange, a contemporary piece on interpersonal relationships (Oct. 5-7, polarisdance.org). And bobbevey offers the multimedia piece Palace of Crystal (Oct. 7-9 and 14-16, bobbevy.com). Oregon Ballet Theatre opens 2011-12 with visiting choreographer Nicolo Fonte’s vision of the Russian carnival ballet Petrouchka and OBT artistic director Christopher Stowell’s take on the story Carmen; OBT’s orchestra plays the Stravinsky and Bizet scores live (Oct. 8-15, obt. org). A few blocks away, White Bird welcomes the West Coast debut of Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company (Oct. 13-15, whitebird. org). That same weekend, the Northwest Dance Project offers its New Now Wow! program of contemporary-ballet world premieres (Oct. 14-15, nwdanceproject.org). Finally comes Australia’s Chunky Move (see above).
La Luna Nueva Festival
Miracle Theatre Group celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month in sabroso style: The Evolution of Latino Hip Hop from Latin Groove
PDX Productions traces the history of the genre from African dance (7:30 and 9:30 pm Thursday, Sept. 29; $15-$17). Los Dedos Bailan, Las Cuerdas Cantan (“Fingers Dance, Strings Sing”) features dancer Laura Onizuka with Latin fusion musicians Toshi Onizuka, Al Martin and Catarina New (7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 30; $20-$23). At Fusion Flamenco: Travesuras (“Pranks”), flamenco dancers Antonio Arrebola and Jason Martínez are accompanied by guitarist Ricardo Diaz and singer José Cortes (7:30 and 9:30 pm Saturday, Oct. 1; $25-$28). El Centro Milagro, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253, milagro.org.
Imago Theatre, Zugzwang
What kind of information can you convey to modern audiences without words? Imago Theatre cofounder Jerry Mouawad created his Opera Beyond Words series to find out. These abstract performances tell stories through theater, dance and movement. Mouawad’s fifth production, Zugzwang, is about a man whose risky gamble in a poker game leads to an adventure with both his enemies and his entourage. Dancer-choreographer Gregg Bielemeier stars as the protagonist Rafifi; Imago cofounder Carol Triffle and dancer-choreographer Keyon Gaskin, among others, join in. Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 231-9581, ticketswest. com. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, Sept. 29-Oct. 22. $10-$12.
Bobbevy, Palace of Crystal
Wild visuals, theatrical costuming and bold dancing—you can expect all of these in a performance by bobbevy, the dance company formerly known as Hot Little Hands. Performed by skilled local movers Richard Decker, Jessica Hightower and Keely McIntyre, this new multimedia piece pits idealism and the desire for happiness against an uncaring reality. The physicality of Dernovsek’s choreography is set against an installation by Stein, video by artist John Bacone and original music by Ash Black Bufflo. The Mouth Studio, 810 SE Belmont St., 913-8959, bobbevy.com. 8 pm Fridays-Sundays, Oct. 7-16. $12-$15.
I TAUGHT THAT KID EVERYTHING HE KNOWS Henry IV Part Two Just one of twelve great plays. Ashland 2011
Michael Winters is Falstaff
F O O D
and D R I N K
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thank you, portland!
photo By InGEr klEkaCZ
Iron and WInE at pIonEEr CourthouSE SQuarE
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FOOD & DRINK: A seriously bent tavern. MUSIC: The MusicfestNW diaries. VISUAL ARTS: TBA at its best. PERFORMANCE: Proud to be a ’Murican.
30 33 47 48
SCOOP GOSSIP THAT LOOKED GOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR. ARMISEN WATCH CONTINUES: We weren’t actually going to mention that Portlandia’s Fred Armisen was hanging out at the Rebecca Gates and the Consortium/Ted Leo show at Backspace on Saturday night. But when he got behind the drums and played a song with Gates during her MFNW set— quite ably, we might add—he kinda left us no choice. It’s not the first time the former Spinanes frontwoman has played alongside the SNL vet: He joined her during a NYC residency five years ago and, according to Gates, actually filled in as a Spinane in the ’90s. Weird? It gets weirder. Ted Leo was also a Spinane.
Since 1974
Never a cover!
STAGE HANDS: White Bird Dance co-founders Paul King and Walter Jaffe have earned the awkwardly titled Jerry Willis Achievement Award for artistic excellence, distinguished leadership and extraordinary vision, for bringing some of the top names in contemporary dance to Portland over the past 14 years. >> Local actor Carlos Alexis Cruz has been awarded a $5,000 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship for his work with the Miracle Theatre Group. DOWNTOWN DINING: Popular coffeehouse Floyd’s has opened a “walk-up window” at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Salmon Street. >> Popular Belmont food cart EuroTrash has opened a second cart at Southwest 10th Avenue and Washington. >> Former Goose Hollow Japanese eatery Kalé has announced it is reopening in a yet-to-be-disclosed location downtown.
Buffalo gap Wednesday, September 14th • 9pm
Buffalo Bandstand (3 live Bands)
FUTURE DRINKING: Mynt Gentlemen’s Club is becoming Syren’s Gentlemens Club. Is there an apostrophe shortage? >> Bistro Asian, a restaurant around the corner from Montgomery Park, is becoming Aki’s Noodle House. >> Lisa Lavochkin has applied to open Barrel, a bottle shop, in St. Johns. >> Ryan Pawley has applied to open a bar called the High Dive at 1406 SE 12th Ave. (one block north of Hawthorne) in a former law office.
Thursday, September 15th • 9pm
Tyler fortier (3 live Bands)
friday, September 16th • 9pm
Dancehall Days (pop rock)
Saturday, September 17th • 9pm
live artist Network Showcase Tuesday, September 20th
opEN MIC NIgHT
Hosted By: Scott gallegos
WIN $50!!
6835 SW Macadam Ave | John’s Landing
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
BACK IN BHAP: Awesomely named Korean food cart Kim Jong Grillin’ burned down in a blaze of Morissette-ian irony in March of this year—just as owner Han Ly Hwang was receiving the judges’ choice award at WW’s Eat Mobile festival—but the Taepodong Hot Dogs will live on. Han has announced he will be opening a bricks-and-mortar establishment at Southeast 49th Avenue and Division Street, a block from where the cart HAN LY HWANG stood. According to a note on his Facebook page, the new venture—slated to open in October—will be called Bhap Sang PDX, and will serve the same lunch items as Kim Jong Grillin’ as well as a new dinner menu.
RACHELLE HACMAC
presented By: live artist Network
HEADOUT
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY SEPT. 14 [DANCE] OFFSITE DANCE Japan’s Offsite Dance Project is plunking three choreographers down in the heart of the Central Eastside Industrial District in Edges, in which Offsite members will perform under bridges, at loading docks and in developing buildings, exploring Portland’s rough edges, both geographic and social. Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington St., 224-7522, pica. org. 7 pm Wednesday-Saturday. $20. Reservations required. [COMICS] BUFFY SEASON NINE The TV show may be over, but the Buffyverse lives on in two-dimensional comic-book form. Season nine launches with a signing and Q&A with editor Scott Allie and artist Georges Jeanty, plus free food, beer and “Buffy swag bags.” Things From Another World, 4133 NE Sandy Blvd., 284-4693. 7 pm. Free. All ages.
THURSDAY SEPT. 15 [WORDS] LITERARY MIXTAPE Writers read their favorite literature by other writers—while you drink booze! This edition’s headliner is Paul Collins, author of The Murder of the Century and “literary detective” on NPR’s Weekend Edition. Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600. 7 pm. Free. 21+.
FRIDAY SEPT. 16 [MUSIC] BOB LOG III Our favorite masked and wasted one-man band returns for another night of boobs and blues. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
SATURDAY SEPT. 17
JAMES RE XROAD
[SHOP] PORTLAND FLEA MARKET In an effort to capture the spirit and convenience of the excellent open-air markets of London and Paris, a local has created Portland Flea, which aims to bring the city’s best vintage retailers to one place. 931 SE 6th Ave. 8 am. Info at facebook.com/portlandflea.
CLIMB INSIDE AN ELEPHANT’S RECTUM. IT’S ART. “Don’t forget to close the flaps!” That’s the last thing you’ll hear as you climb into the rectum of a 20-foot elephant. Don’t worry: It’s art. Oscar’s Delirium Tremens is the star attraction at TBA’s the Works, the late-night social hub of the festival held at Washington High School. The vision of conceptual artist Patrick J. Rock, it’s a giant inflatable pink elephant, lying on its back, legs in the air, with a bouncing castle in its stomach. And the only way in or out is a big slit in its rear end.
After bouncing dizzily and without inhibition, shielded from onlookers inside the belly of the beast, participants must force their way back out through the narrow bum flaps, tumbling out awkwardly onto the grass in front of a crowd of strangers. It probably represents something very profound about the nature of birth and death and post-processual theory in South Asian archaeology. It’s also a lot of fun. GO: The Works at Washington High School (the elephant is outside, around the side of the building. It’s hard to miss). Southeast Stark Street and 14th Avenue, pica.org. Closes Oct. 30. Free.
MONDAY SEPT. 19 [THEATER] BE CAREFUL! THE SHARKS WILL EAT YOU! Actor Jay Alvarez performs his solo show about the Cuban revolution and his family’s escape to Miami in 1964. Alvarez’s performance is presented here as part of Miracle Theatre’s La Luna Nueva festival of Latin music and theater. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 pm Monday-Wednesday. $15-$17.
TUESDAY SEPT. 20 [MUSIC] THE FLAMING LIPS Even if you can’t stand the Flaming Lips’ psychedelic pop, you have to admit a certain curiosity: What kind of crazy shit will Wayne Coyne and company dream up this time? Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St. 8 pm. $49.50-$64. All ages. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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FOOD & DRINK REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14 Food & Faith: Preserving Tomatoes Class
Thank God for Ball jars. The Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon saves your tomatoes (from rot, by canning them) in a workshop that includes everything from green tomato recipes to something called “The Law of Salsas.” Amen. Holy Redeemer Catholic Church, 25 N Rosa Parks Way, 2854539. 6 pm. Free. Email foodandfaith@ emoregon.org or call 221-1054 to sign up. Info at emoregon.org/food_farms.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 Hood River Fruit Loop Pear Celebration
Yes, nearly every weekend the Hood River Valley Fruit Loop is celebrating one juicy edible or another, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t motor out to enjoy this collection of farms and fruit stands nearly every weekend anyway. This time they are highlighting pears. Pear jams, pear jellies, pear desserts, pear coleslaw…all things pear. There are also alpacas, which don’t do anything pear-related as far as I know, but are worth a visit just on account of their soft, billowy fur. 10 am-5 pm Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 17-18. Free. Find info and a map of participating stores and farms at www.hoodriverfruitloop.com.
Special Snowflake Supperclub
Portland’s adorably inventive roving dinner series Special Snowflake mashes up the worlds of fine food and DIY craftspeople at a special feast at the city’s ADX Building this Saturday. ADX is home to makers of all sorts, so the dinner takes its cue from “communities of builders: bees, Amish barn raisings and Carthage.” That may mean anything from having attendees shake cream into butter for their table, chip ice or nibble bread made with starters from different PDX neighborhoods and grub on lamb with za’atar and goat cheese panna cotta. People’s Pig man Cliff Allen will be working with the crew on eats, while Tressa Yellig of Salt, Fire & Time shakes up cocktails accompanied by beats from A.D.D.J. ADX Building, 417 SE 11th Ave., 915-4342. 6:30 pm. $40. Info at snowsupper.blogspot.com. Tickets at snowflakeadxfeast.eventbrite.com.
Portland VegFest
The city celebrates all things meatless this weekend at the seventh annual VegFest, which fills the Oregon Convention Center with cooking demos, tasty food samples, medicine and nutrition speakers from vegan bodybuilder and WW cover boy Robert Cheeke to Dr. Neal Barnard of the Cancer Project, as well as animal welfare groups and other granola loving persons. Oregon Convention Center , 777 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 235-7575. 10 am-6 pm SaturdaySunday, Sept. 17-18. $6 a day; kids 10 and under free. Info at nwveg.org.
Patton Valley Harvest Hike and Lunch
The folks at Patton Valley Vineyard invite you to stumble through rows and rows of grapes with a glass of their finest pinot noir in hand. After the guided tour they’ll feed you lunch and clue you in on next year’s vintage. Patton Valley Vineyard, 9449 SW Old Highway 47, Gaston, 503-985-3445. Noon-3:30 pm Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 17-18. $45. Call or email Jennifer@ pattonvalley.com to reserve your seat.
SUNDAY, SEPT. 18 34th Annual St. George Middle Eastern Festival
Kebabs, falafel, Arabic pastries, folk music and Orthodox Christian materials abound at this outer Southeast Portland festival. Event takes place at St. George Orthodox Christian Church, 2101 NE 162nd Ave. Noon-7 pm. Free.
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C H R I S R YA N P H O T O . C O M
PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: KELLY CLARKE. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
Wild About Game
Every year, the Resort at the Mountain hosts a ravenous mishmash of meat lovers, celebrity chefs, cookbook authors and media types for the Wild about Game Cook-off, which challenges kitchen pros to an Iron Chef-ish competition featuring goods from local game purveyor Nicky USA like wild boar, elk and Fermin Iberico de Bellota ham. This year’s lineup is pretty ridiculous, from Naomi Pomeroy (Beast) and Gregory Denton (Metrovino) to Beaker & Flask man Ben Bettinger, among others. Tons of tasty bites from the majority of charcuterie and butchering outfits in the city plus lots of free wine, beer and spirits samples make this one trip to Mount Hood you shouldn’t miss. Resort at The Mountain-Welches, 68010 E Fairway Ave., 622-3101. 11 am-4 pm. $35. Info at tickets at nickyusa. com/wag11.
Man vs. Dog Take Three
The Original, Portland’s “dinerant,” is fond of hot-dog-related events. This week it’s the cafe’s hot-dog eating contest, which raises cash for the Children’s Hospital Travel Fund. Pork gorgers encourage smaller-stomached friends and families to pledge $1 to $5 per dog consumed. The restaurant offers an array of special sausages for the day of the event, from beer-battered buffalo dogs to Reuben dogs with kraut and Thousand Island dressing. The Original, 300 SW 6th Ave., 546-2666. 3 pm. Free. To participate email info@originaldinerant.com.
FIVE GUT PLACES FOR AN OKTOBERFEST SAUSAGE Otto’s Sausage Kitchen
There’s pretty much nothing better than devouring a spicy, juicy smoked pork link ($3) at a picnic table out in front of the Eichentopf family’s Woodstock sausage shop (open since 1929!). Just don’t be surprised if the whole neighborhood is out there with you, waiting patiently to order up an old-fashioned wiener ($2) or chicken sausage at the big black grill that sits belching smoke outside the shop all summer and winter long. Inside, the quaint operation stocks nearly 50 more types of housemade sausages, from kielbasa to chorizo. 4138 SE Woodstock Blvd., 771-6714.
Edelweiss Sausage Co. & Delicatessen
This efficient, well-organized little slice of Munich, complete with fantastic housemade wieners, will make you homesick for Germany—even if you’ve never visited the country. House-cured hams, bacon, huge meatloafs and sausages—dried and fresh, from Polish to wienerwurst—nestle in the meat case, while a Bavarian bounty of pickled cabbage, tinned herring and fine chocolates pack the small aisles. Take a number if you want immediate service, but expect smiles and lots of meat and cheese samples if you’re still deciding on your order. Grab a booth and spend hours consuming double bocks and brats. 3119 SE 12th Ave., 238-4411, edelweissdeli.com.
Original Bavarian Sausage
While I can’t confirm the originality of this emporium of all things Deutsch just off of 99W, I can say that it is genuinely Bavarian, from the high-peaked roof to the jars of Süßer Senf mustard to the piles and rings of wurst in the glass case that runs the length of the room. It’s a cavalcade of all things pink and sliceable, from smoked schinkenwurst to teewurst, weisswurst to rotwurst, along with loads of imported candies and housemade pickles. BEN WATERHOUSE. 8705 SW Locust St., Tigard, 892-5152. originalbavariansausage.com.
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
CONT. on page 31
TOP OF THE POPS: The Bent Brick’s riff on popcorn shrimp.
HUNGER GAMES
plate, $4) and shaving frozen and dried mussels in Bent’s kitchen. Ordering blindly becomes more fun after downing a few of Bent Brick’s exceedingly strong $8 cocktails (“that’s just a big ’ol glass of booze” drawled a server as he handed me my Path To Victory, a viscous concoction of bourbon and bitter, herby Chinato cut with vinegar and gingersnap). The spot BY KELLY CLA R KE food @ wweek.com is lucky to have Adam Robinson behind its long, curved steel bar, making heady elixirs flush with Scott Dolich and Will Preisch’s new food-obsessed herbs and verjus. There’s an excellent selection of tavern, the Bent Brick, doesn’t mince words. You Northwest wines on tap, nearly all available in half might be given the phrase “shrimp, corn, cherry carafes for less than $16, and $4 glasses of Upright tomatoes, young coriander” ($14) and end up with a and Double Mountain brews among others. Properly lubricated you can finally tear your tongue-in-cheek riff on bar menu popcorn shrimp that includes everything from a Johnny cake and eyes away from deciphering the contents of your pickled corn to actual popcorn and prawn butter. plate to consider the spot’s oddball English-walledThe pork in “pork, carrots, root beer glaze, almond garden-meets-industrial-loft space, which is often yogurt” ($19) comes both as thinly sliced loin and filled with a mix of devoted foodies, young men in as a crispy-moist brisket, underneath a pile of fresh jorts and groups of Pearl District ladies with toned carrot shavings and on top of a carrot-based riff arms and highlighted hair. The staff blast “Brick on those glutinous taro cakes you get at dim sum. House” and “Kung Fu Fighting” during early dinAnd we haven’t even gotten to the “tomato” in the ner service and dispatch with the food warnings on the menu for: “Multnomah County Health Depart“smoked albacore” dish yet. In other words, your meal will be somewhat ment requires us to tell you that eating raw and/or confusing, artfully composed and more often than undercooked items may make you poop or barf.” So not very, very tasty. Here’s the deal: This locally the food is serious; nothing much else is. The best thing I’ve eaten so sourced “bar food” will unsettle far is that very fishy smoked straightforward eaters. Those Order this: A bowl of perfect char-grilled albacore ($13), which lies atop who expect a familiar hunk summer beans, smoked albacore with a trio of juicy green, yellow of cow with a side of spuds tomatoes, shrimp with corn, buttermilk pudding, a fizzy ginger rum Slabtown Sour. and red heirloom tomatoes all when they order “beef, smoke, Best deal: Plump, smoky mussels on the sprinkled with those crunchy, onions, potato” ($20) may half shell ($4) and a half carafe of Guild salty mussel chips. It’s swimbe taken aback by the sleek “Bent Blend” Rosé ($10). ming in a delicate shellfish modern plate they get, which I’ll pass: Bland quinoa and kale fritters broth studded with bits of reimagines the homey classic with carrot cream ($2 each). purple seaweed and imposas a spectacular symphony of onion that places charred and pickled cipollinis sibly sweet little raisinated, candied tomatoes. It and tiny chive flowers atop a long slick of creamy tastes like a caprese salad that went skinny-dipping onion puree (the beef gets second-fiddle treatment in the Mediterranean. There’s also a creamy, tart as a braised chuck and flatiron alongside a lone fin- buttermilk pudding ($8) served with house-made Graham cracker crumbles and icy blueberry sorbet gerling potato). These are geeky plates for adventurous food that vies for the title of best pudding on earth. Not lovers—the flavors may be familiar but the prepara- everything works: there’s bland kale noodles ($15) tions are not; each inventive plate plays pinball in and jokey hazelnut “baked beans” ($5) that just your mouth with their combos of crunchy, crumbly, make you crave the real thing. Then again, for $48 moist and creamy textures. Partisans of Dolich’s a person, you can simply eat little bites of every other local restaurant, Park Kitchen, are somewhat single dish on the menu. The Bent Brick is game if used to this kind of thing. But the Bent Brick owner you are. is quick to give credit for the tavern’s menu to executive chef Preisch, who was sous chef at PK before EAT: The Bent Brick, 1639 NW Marshall St., 6881655, thebentbrick.com. Dinner 5-10 pm Tuesdayhe started pickling eggs and sea beans (house pickle Saturday. $$ Moderate.
AT THE BENT BRICK, THE FOOD IS SERIOUS. NOTHING ELSE IS.
Old Country Sausage
“We make it all here—the sausage, the meats, with none of the shippings,” booms Lydia Heredea, a warm-eyed woman with a heavy Romanian accent standing behind Old Country’s chest-high case of kielbasa, knackwurst, Hungarian black paprika links, Polish dogs, hot pepper-sprigged bologna and mild wieners (“for dee baybies,” as she puts it). This Teutonic imports wonderland has been selling its sausages made from local meats and German grocery staples for 25 years (the original owner still drops by to cook every week), but Heredea now runs the shop, making sure locals get
their creamy butterkase cheese, pickled herring, and potato-dumpling mixes at a fair price. 10634 NE Sandy Blvd., 254-4106.
Prost!
Portland’s tiny version of a München Hofbräuhaus rings with the clinking of giant steins of clove-scented Weissbier, malty lager and Paulaner Oktoberfest nightly—it serves only German suds—while noisy groups of revelers chow on big plates of serviceable Bavarian Sausage Company bratwurst and sauerkraut. 4237 N Mississippi Ave., 954-2674, prostportland.com.
EAT MOBILE LIZ DEVINE
Oct. 6, 2011
HEADOUT
PAGE 29
WOK AND ROLL: Leung Kwun Hung stir fries his hand-pulled noodles.
NOODLE HOUSE You’d be forgiven for overlooking Noodle House. With the overwhelming array of eats served at the ever-expanding roster of carts parked at downtown Portland’s 10th Avenue and Southwest Alder Street pod, sometimes it’s just easier to grab some timetested Sawasdee or Nong’s grub and retreat. But you’re a sucker if you miss out on Leung Kwun Hung’s noodles, which live on the less trafficked north side of the lot. The new cart owner was a chef at Beaverton’s Korean-Chinese hideaway Duh Kuh Bee, and less than a year after DKB’s former owner, Frank Fong, opened Fra n k ’s N o o d le Hou s e on the east side, another Eat this: There’s teriyaki beef and solid pan-fried salmon, but the noodles are DKB alum has brought the star here. Get the Seafood Noodle hand-pulled noodles to the ($7.50). downtown crowd—hearty, Best deal: Tender pork dumplings ($5) and a can of Coke ($1). super-fresh strands as big in circumference as the chopsticks you’ll use to shovel them into your mouth. There are no frills at this tiny cart. The noodle maestro and his gregarious wife give the goods a quick stir fry with big handfuls of tender (not rubbery) baby squid, shrimp, and calamari rings, along with some basil and spicy chili sauce. There’s some cabbage and onion in there too for crunch, but that’s it. That’s all you need. You can also order the noodles with chicken or sometimes beef. One small gripe: The nose-clearing sauce is a bit one-note—but as Oregon prepares to go into the extended gloomy season these noodles are gonna be a comfort food godsend. KELLY CLARKE. EAT: Noodle House, Southwest 9th Avenue and Washington Street, 998-1019. 11 am-6 pm Monday-Saturday. $ Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
MFNW DIARY J.J.BRAUNER
THE MUSICFESTNW DIARIES, 2011 WE ROCKED AND ROLLED ALL NIGHT. WE PARTIED EVERY DAY. WE EVEN TWEETED. BY WW STA F F
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MusicfestNW is growing up. The festival has gotten longer—five days in all; the wristbands are more expensive; the production values are higher (see the epic shows at Pioneer Courthouse Square); and the day parties and unofficial events are growing exponentially. But at the heart of it, MFNW is still the biggest music marathon in the city—and it’s still a total blast. We wrote about it for five exhausting days. Here are some of the highlights: PONIES IN THE LIVING ROOM: Band of Horses at Pioneer Courthouse Square.
WEDNESDAY
7:05 pm @ Wonder Ballroom parking lot (pre-fest party) Typhoon frontman Kyle Morton says he’s excited to play the Doc Martens store for the second time, and I ask if he’ll be getting a free pair of shoes. “I hope so,” he says, lifting his foot to reveal a floppy sole almost completely detached from the rest of his shoe. Sure, his band just played Letterman, but there are also like a dozen people in Typhoon. That’s a lot of mouths to feed. CASEY JARMAN. 10:20 pm @ Crystal Ballroom The girl next to me is tribal dancing and the man behind me is breathing creepily down my neck. Music festivals are so good in theory, but interacting with other people always spoils it for me. The Kills seem to be having a lovely time. Alison Mosshart’s hair is the star of the show. RUTH BROWN. 12:15 am @ Bunk Bar You know what Bunk Bar needs? Some actual stage lights. I mean, I’m pretty sure that’s Eric Bachmann onstage gently strumming through a very pretty, very Dylanish version of “Man o’ War,” but it could also be my high-school shop teacher from as much as I can see. MATTHEW P. SINGER.
THURSDAY
ing lineup straight. So be it: The smoke machine is tremendous and oddly invigorating. MARK STOCK. 9 pm @ Dante’s Nether Regions just kicked off the metal portion of MFNW with a cover of “Anthem” by Rush. I could not be happier. NATHAN CARSON. 9:05 pm @ Aladdin Theater Not two minutes into his first song, 70-yearold Detroit guitar god Dennis Coffey has just murdered his axe. Dressed in all black, topped with a black Kangol and shades, he’s the coolest dude in the room. Then Portland funk legend Ural Thomas—dressed, by contrast, in all white—joins in to sing a throbbing rendition of Funkadelic’s “I Bet You.” If you’re not here, you’re a fool...and most likely uncomfortably hot. MPS. 9:37 pm @ Crystal Ballroom Sebadoh’s Lou Barlow: “The first time Dinosaur Jr. played Portland, there was one guy in the crowd. His name was Eugene and he was a skinhead. And he was really angry.” CJ. 11:10 pm @ Roseland Theater Here’s something I never thought I’d say at a Butthole Surfers show: I’m bored. Hell, the band looks bored. ROBERT HAM.
her sneakers. Her guitar starts to squeal, and a couple people hoot and holler. “You don’t know this one,” she says. “but thanks for your enthusiasm anyway!” CJ.
FRIDAY
10:30 am @ Doug Fir A rather long line for this ridiculously early Horrors show. Two types of people here: hungover and really hungover. Only children should have to wait in lines while it is still light out. Oh wait, we’re at a Horrors show on a Friday morning: We are children. CHRIS STAMM. 5:17 pm @ Dr. Martens store Ted Leo introduces “The Sword in the Stone” with this mild chastisement of a certain rabid fan: “Someone requested this on Twitter. I don’t take kindly to that. But I was gonna play it anyway.” I’m praying that Leo doesn’t mention said rabid fan by name, as said rabid fan happens to be me. CS. 8:01 pm @ Pioneer Courthouse Square Somebody yells, “Freebird!” Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam actually starts playing it, saying “You asked for it, bitches.” He doesn’t play the whole song. “Be careful what you ask for, bitches,” he says. I never thought I would ever hear Sam Beam say “bitches” twice in two minutes. ARYA IMIG.
12:38 pm @ Doug Fir “I’m usually not awake this early,” says Ruban Nielson of Portland’s Unknown Mortal Orchestra. I had no idea Nielson was such a guitar hero: He plays almost like a jazz guitarist, his contorted hand crabwalking up and down the fretboard. MPS.
11:23 pm @ Branx Handsome Furs are pouring their hearts out, but the music is too quiet. At least the banter is amusing. “I’m glad we made it after all that bullshit at the border,” Canadian duo Handsome Furs’ Alexei Perry tells the crowd. “Fuck 9/11.” CJ.
9:30 pm @ Roseland Theater Shabazz Palaces—an act that’s built on wobbles and woozes—is suffering from the Roseland’s sound system. Fans are beginning to boo and chant for Macklemore, which is sad, because Shabazz released one of the better hip-hop albums this year with Black Up. REED JACKSON.
8:15 pm @ Wonder Ballroom A woman well into her third trimester is headbanging and screaming every Brand New lyric. I watch in half awe/half terror that her water is going to break all over the ballroom floor any second now. DEVAN COOK.
12:17 am @ Doug Fir This might as well be a Levi’s ad. Phantogram is pretty, well-dressed and churning out clubby versions of its sugary electro hits. There’s roughly 15 pounds of denim on stage. MS.
9:31 pm @ Hawthorne Theatre Damn, it’s good to see Transient back on stage. A recent head-on collision in Savannah, Ga., left two of these kids in casts. There is nothing more badass than playing a show in a cast. NC.
12:25 pm @ Holocene EMA is wearing a loose white T-shirt tucked into long underwear. It sounds ramshackle, but it’s amazingly stylish right down to the thick, pink socks poking out of
10:03 pm @ Mississippi Studios Fernando’s bassist is Sagat from Street Fighter. Better still, his guitar strap is diamond-studded. I can’t keep my eyes off it. MS.
8:40 pm @ Branx Off to a great start. Came expecting Pancake Breakfast and got Breakfast Mountain. I can’t keep this loaded, fuck-
10:20 pm @ Roseland Theater This is the craziest I’ve seen the Roseland since Girl Talk, but it’s a much more wholesome feeling tonight. Instead of dry humping on the dance floor, teenage kids are dancing and hanging on every word Macklemore says between songs. I’m transported, suddenly, to seeing my favorite band at 16. But, as Mack raps, “It’s not the same; it never will be,” I’m getting teary. CJ. 10:25 pm @ Roseland Theater Seducing a room that does not need seducing, Macklemore says he’s been a Trail Blazers fan since the Sonics left Seattle, and that he went to high school with Brandon Roy. AARON MESH. 11:30 pm @ Backspace The Thermals killed it. Straight up. If you’re getting Portlanders to do something other than just stand and watch, then you’re doing a lot of things right. MAGGIE SUMMERS. 11:45 pm @ Crystal Ballroom Good thing this Blitzen Trapper concert is only a head-nodding affair. If it was more of a dancing thing, I’m pretty sure the audience would drown in its own sweat. RJ. 11:54 pm @ NW 5th & Couch I hardly ever do this kind of thing, but Ted Leo is walking by and I have to stop him and shake his hand. “I’m a huge fan,” I say. “I’m sure I would be a big fan of you as well if I knew you better,” he says. I swoon like a 15-year-old girl meeting Taylor Lautner. RH. 1:07 am @ Branx Glass Candy has invited everyone on stage for a dance party. Most oblige. MIA does this all the time, but this is far cooler because it’s manageable. MS.
SATURDAY
3 pm @ N Tillamook & Kerby These Porta Pottys are really impressive. I got in before any of the poop did. They’re CONT. on page 35 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC A N DY W R I G H T
MFNW DIARY CONT.
PARTY ANIMAL: The Mean Jeans at the Hawthorne Theatre.
fresh, and I kind of feel like I’m in my own personal sauna. A friend squatting in the one beside mine says she’s cancelling her 24-Hour Fitness membership and getting a hot pot. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. 8:13 pm @ Pioneer Courthouse Square Here’s the thing I don’t get about Explosions in the Sky: There’s really no reason for them to be an instrumental band. Their music isn’t evocative enough not to require a singer. All the dudes are currently rocking out in great disproportion to the actual rock-out quality of the music. We head to Virginia Cafe. Uh-oh. MPS. 9:50 pm @ Barmuda Triangle An absolute circus. Bagpipe players, puking frat boys, people sleeping on guitars, a dude on stilts, doughnuts everywhere. A group of people is hoisting a friend up so he can reach a half-empty bottle of beer sitting on a second-story window sill. Half-empty. MS. 11:07 pm @ Roseland Theater I don’t get easily overwhelmed at concerts, but I don’t know how much more of Neurosis I can handle. As I hang out by the PA speakers, my puny earplugs don’t stand much of a chance. It’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed, but I’m so tired that it’s starting to scare me a little bit. RH. 12:02 am @ Backspace Ted Leo just turned 41. About 250 people sing “Happy Birthday,” led by Rebecca Gates. Leo plays along on guitar, ever the working-class hero. A man walks by with a green parrot on his shoulder. AI. 12:20 am @ Star Theater Oh. My. God. Dam-Funk & Master Blazter’s Zapp-style synth funk is threatening to shake this new club off its foundation. Mr. Funk himself, in a red cap and shades, is hunched over his keyboard, sending out sizzling waves of squiggly awesomeness. This is by far the coolest thing I’ve witnessed at MFNW. MPS. 12:23 am @ Dante’s As I wait in line, I get a text from a friend who just met Big Freedia at the gas station. I’ve heard so much about Freedia, I’m starting to believe she’s just a mythical creature, like Santa Claus. NV.
12:50 am @ Holocene Possessed party starter Zuzuka Poderosa is encouraging the sweaty revelers in her care to dip. Dipping is yet another dance move I am too tired to attempt. I sway instead. Swaying feels good after nearly nine hours of walking, standing, imbibing and rocking the fuck out. CS. 1:10 am @ Dante’s Asses are, indeed, in abundance for Big Freedia’s set. She was the breakout star of last year’s MFNW and has played a bunch of times since, but the novelty of the transgender queen of N’awlins’ so-called sissy bounce hasn’t faded in Portland, as this place is packed and undulating. MPS. 1:12 am @ Ash Street Saloon Fred and Toody Cole are going to be 70 in 7 years. I’m having a hard time processing this information. DC. 2:05 am @ Union Pine MFNW’s secret after-parties aren’t exactly a secret anymore, and this warehouse is way too crowded to make the free drinks and food worth it. And really, after seeing Dam-Funk, I don’t really need to party much longer. We grab some tacos, a girl throws a Vitamin Water in my friend’s face, and we hail a cab. MPS.
SUNDAY
6:55 pm @ Pioneer Courthouse Square Cass McCombs sounds great, but I’ve crashed into about 13 different walls at this point, so any music with this kind of subtlety just isn’t going to register much. Oh, but there’s a sax solo, the second I’ve heard at Pioneer Square this weekend. If Clarence Clemons were still alive, he could’ve headlined this thing. MPS. 9:20 pm @ Pioneer Courthouse Square Tonight is the real live version of those Oregon stickers with the green heart on them. It’s absolutely impossible not to love this town right now. Band of Horses is loose, even comical. Ben Bridwell is pretending to be a superstar (which, ironically, he pretty much is) and making fun of his own songs. Lady Oregon, I am in your debt. MS. READ MORE: See all our MFNW blogging, plus photos and video, at wweek.com.
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
ww presents
I M A D E T HIS now in Willamette Week’s Classifieds: i Made tHis WW’s free MarketplaCe for loCally produCed art. one artist and one work (for sale) are featured.
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines.
13 topless bartenders and 70 dancers each week!
for subMission guidelines: wweek.com/imadethis take a look! } P. 62
SEPT. 14 - 20
Open Every Day 11am to 2:30am www.CasaDiablo.com (503) 222-6600 • 2839 NW St. Helens Rd
Editor: CASEY JARMAN. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, go to wweek. com/submitevents and follow submission directions. All shows should be submitted two weeks or more in advance of event. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: cjarman@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14 Thievery Corporation
[UNIVERSAL SOUL] Club and lounge music is not my cup of tea, but there’s a streamlined crispness about Thievery Corporation one sees more often in a good pair of pants than a super-collaborative, globally minded band. The D.C. duo of Eric Hilton and Rob Garza has been turning out rich worldly grooves since 1995, and reasserts itself with sixth studio release Culture of Fear. Per usual, TC’s new material is politically charged and backed by equal parts electronic instrumentation and a giant backing band. Per usual as well, TC stretches itself thin, incorporating so many genres—from soul to tribal music to electronica—you don’t know in which section of the record store to look for it, let alone what to wear to the show. MARK STOCK. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 8 pm. $39.50-$68. All ages.
Raquy and the Cavemen, Ritim Egzotik
[RHYTHM TRADERS] If you can get past the starry-eyed look on the faces of Raquy and the Cavemen and their flowing hippie clothing, you will find a pair of musicians who have spent their lives studying the intricate world of percussion. Raquy Danziger and Liron Peled have traveled extensively, learning new methods of Middle Eastern playing and instrumentation and bringing that knowledge back to the States to dazzle audiences with their kinetic playing and weaving of polyrhythms. It’s blissfully free of Western influences, sticking directly to source material that will stir up all manner of dance moves. ROBERT HAM. Fez Ballroom, 316 SW 11th Ave., 2217262. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
Def Leppard, Heart
[ARMAGEDDON IT] After seeing the music video for “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” I studiously scrawled the Def Leppard logo into my junior-high school binder. That was 20 years ago, but the question, “Demolition woman, can I be your man?” still lingers in my head. Despite near-dinosaur status, both Leppard and Heart have remained in the limelight as of late: Leppard’s Phil Collen and his girlfriend appeared on reality show L.A. Ink to get matching tattoos; Heart pulled “Barracuda” from Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential campaign. Today, both bands are the musical embodiment of fast driving and fist-pumping. JOHN ISAACSON. Sleep Country Amphitheater, 17200 NE Delfel Road, Ridgefield, Wash., 360-816-7000. 7:30 pm. $48.50$121. All ages.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 15 Cecilio and Kapono
[HAWAIIAN EASY LISTENING] Removed from their natural habitat, it’s somewhat hard to make sense of Hawaii’s Cecilio and Kapono. The folk duo started out in the early ’70s, adding a sunny aftertaste to the easy-listening folk pop exemplified by Loggins and Messina. The duo has since gone on to sell out every venue on the Hawaiian Islands. Cecillo and Kapono have toured with Santana, put out records on Columbia and continue to sponsor a Waikiki-based charity golf tournament. However, much like Superman and his power-giving yellow sun, Cecilio and Kapono tend to lose potency the farther they travel from the Islands. Portland, nestled safely on the West Coast, should still be close enough to receive some of the duo’s luster. SHANE DANAHER. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 7 pm. $30 (Minors must be accompanied by a parent.). 21+.
TOP FIVE
BY A MY L AV ERE
BADASS WOMEN IN POP CULTURE Lynn Cohen I met Lynn on a film (The Romance of Loneliness) and fell in love with her craft and philosophy regarding acting and life in general. Dory Previn Dory Previn made seriously personal honest music, so much so that you sometimes feel like a voyeur when listening to her songs. Bobbie Nelson I can’t be sure if I admire her or I’m just jealous of her being related to Willie Nelson, traveling in his band and playing the piano like she does. Terry Gross This is one seriously smart woman and I’m crazy about Fresh Air.
TICKETS ON SALE FRIDAY AT 10AM Tickets available at LiveNation.com, Ticketmaster, or charge-by-phone: (800) 745-3000 36
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
Kate Bush Although she has disappointed me from time to time, she remains in my top five for her relentless creativity and the imagery she conjures in so many of her songs. SEE IT: Singer-songwriter/actor Amy LaVere plays Mississippi Studios on Thursday, Sept. 15. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
MUSIC CHAIRKICKERS.COM
THURSDAY - FRIDAY
STILL SAD AFTER ALL THESE YEARS: Low plays the Aladdin Theater on Saturday.
6ix, Illa, Vocab, Mikey Vegaz, Juma BlaQ, Stevo
[HIP-HOP] Although Portland MCs Illa and Mikey Vegaz look and sound like young, up-and-coming talent, the two twentysomethings are actually veterans of the local hip-hop scene, making noise in the aughts as part of mixtape machine Hi-Rollerz Records. Both rappers have stayed busy since then, releasing a variety of material that demonstrates not only the artists’ fondness for the “swag” subculture, but also their ability to bring some originality to the picture. Illa recently made noise with the Dekk-assisted Moxie Black project, which spawned the binge-drinking; Vegaz, meanwhile, followed in the footsteps of PO-hop kingpins Cool Nutz and Maniak Lok with his money-flaunting raps of Northeast Portland street life—but he is also not afraid to dip a toe into mainstream R&B for his singles. Both guys have put a lot of sweat into their work over the years, and both still have a chance of making it big. REED JACKSON. Ash Street Saloon, 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
Kitchen’s Floor, Fat History Month, Pacific City Nightlife Vision Band, Fuzzy Cloaks
[DORM-ROOM ROCK] Fat History Month doesn’t want to be taken too seriously. There’s the name, of course. Then there’s the cover of its new album, Fucking Despair, which depicts a penis protruding from a pear. And lyrics that beg to be transformed into something one wouldn’t be humiliated to mumble in public. It’s a shame, because the sounds on Fucking Despair are actually quite fucking beautiful. This Boston duo’s tottering pop, which recalls a time when Built to Spill sort of lived up to its name, strikes an exciting balance between hyperactivity and stoned meandering in songs that are just too damned lovely and wistful to be burdened with titles like “Old Lady Smokers.” CHRIS STAMM. East End, 203 SE Grand Ave., 2320056. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
Amy LaVere, Noah Gundersen
[DEVILISH COUNTRY POP] I’m a sucker for a girl with a quick wit and dark heart, and Amy LaVere fits the bill. On her new disc, Stranger Me, the Memphis songbird proves her beak is sharp and ready to tear a few heartstrings to shreds. She excels at songs both confrontational (album opener “Damn Love Song” quickly shows that LaVere is not your sweet little coffee-shop pop tart) and bittersweet (the aching and beautifully arranged “Lucky Boy”), cultivating a sound that’s somewhere between Loretta Lynn and Chris Isaak along the way. CASEY JARMAN. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi St., 288-3895. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Mitten, Mnemonic Sounds, Night Surgeon
[ELECTROPOP] I’ll just come out and say it: Ever since I heard the Postal Service play “Such Great Heights,” I’ve dug around for electronic pop with that same organic fusion of emotion and robotic clicks and whirs. Mitten has struck that balance, and I have it on good authority that the Brooklyn outfit’s live shows are even more encouraging than its excellent new EP, See You Bye. There’s a whole lot of cute here, but it’s not too cute—these are songs you can dance or swoon to without blushing, a rare quality in electropop. CASEY JARMAN. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., 2481030. 9 pm. $7. 21+.
FRIDAY, SEPT. 16 Squid Attack, Charts, Profcal, Fringe Class
[MOODY, MINIMAL] Some dads play catch with their sons. Some dads help their sons build model trains. Sid and Isaac Scott, the father-son duo behind Squid Attack, would rather spend their time playing bleak, haunting and sparse indie rock songs. On the group’s recent five-track, selftitled EP, Squid Attack proves itself more than just a gimmick by utilizing Isaac’s alarmingly grownup vocals—how many kids do you know who sound like Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan?—and some stirring minimal songwriting. What better band to raise money for Music in the Schools than a group that proves indie rock is consistent with traditional family values? CASEY JARMAN. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. 8 pm. $3. All ages.
Devo
[ROBO REBELS] On the surface, the band Gerald Casale and classmate Mark Mothersbaugh formed not long after witnessing, up close, the Kent State massacre in 1970 didn’t look “political.” With its matching jumpsuits, flower-pot helmets and music that sounded like the soundtrack to an android dance party, Devo didn’t appear to be much more than an art-school prank. But the whole concept was, and remains, one steeped in anger, frustration and protest—only, instead of expressing it through spit and middle fingers like the punks who came after them, the band hid its nihilism behind a veil of absurdity. More than 30 years after introducing the notion of “de-evolution” via its classic 1978 debut, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo, the band’s ideas remain prescient. Its albums might not have kept up—the 2010 comeback record, Something for Everybody, is its best since 1980’s Freedom of Choice, though that’s not really saying much—but Devo is much more than just “the ‘Whip It!’ guys,” something proven
CONT. on page 38 Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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FRIDAY - SATURDAY
by its still remarkably strong live shows. MATTHEW SINGER. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 2250047. 9 pm. $40. All ages. Tel. 503-226-6630 • Open Daily 11am-2:30am •
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Bob Log III, Mr. Free & The Satellite Freakout
[ONE-MAN MADNESS] Clad in a 1970s daredevil get-up—complete with full-head helmet—and playing avant-garde blues-inspired riffs while drumming with his feet and mumbling about “boobies” through a receiver embedded in his mask, Arizona’s Bob Log III is certainly an acquired taste. He’s a madman with a mad shtick: a one-man rock band who invites women in the audience to dip their breasts in his drink, and who sometimes wanders into the restroom while playing. If that sounds off-putting, steer clear. Otherwise, dip into the brown acid and prepare for one of the weirdest, rowdiest shows of the year. AP KRYZA. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 226-6630. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
Transient Benefit: Valkyrie Rodeo, Stag Bitten, Muscle Beach, Tyrants, Fall the Giants
[GRIND CAUSE] Local grindcore band Transient was on its way to Savannah, Ga., when an SUV crossed the freeway median and smashed into its touring van. While everyone made it out alive, lead singer Krysta had to be airlifted to a hospital, the group’s van is totaled, and bills from the incident continue to pile up. Locals have been putting on benefit shows to help the band with expenses, and Stag Bitten and Valkyrie Rodeo step up this time around. If you want an energetic, packed, danceable basement show, the best way to bring it back is by showing some local love and coming out tonight. JOHN ISAACSON. Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick St., 285-3718. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Dispirit, Atriarch, Noctus
[NONE MORE BLACK] Back in my scrambled teen years, my friends and I, when confronted with something too epic to wrap our brains around, would call that something “sick” and leave it at that. “This shit is sick” being the preferred complete sentence. I was reminded of this failure of language while listening to Dispirit’s Rehearsal at Oboroten demo, a simultaneously sprawling and suffocating tangle of black metal and bleak doom overseen by John Gossard of Weakling and Asunder fame. I probably need only mention the legendary Weakling to incite curiosity here, a shortcut for which I am grateful, because Dispirit has rendered me temporarily dumb. For old time’s sake then: This shit is sick. CHRIS STAMM. Plan B, 1305 SE 8th Ave., 230-9020. 8 pm. $8. 21+.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 17
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
PROFILE BRIAN LEE
MUSIC
Live Music, Music, Cabaret, Cabaret, Burlesque Live Live Music, Cabaret, Burlesque & Rock-n-Roll Burlesque & & Rock-n-Roll Rock-n-Roll
Low, Bachelorette
[THE BEAUTIFUL SADNESS] C’mon, the most recent album from Minnesota vets Low is a dark gem of slow-ascending sadness. Of course, if you’ve heard any of the band’s 10 other records released over the last decade-plus, you probably already know that. After so many studio sessions together, the stirring fusion of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s voices is almost compulsory at this point, and the bruised melancholy of the band’s slow-dissolving compositions is lush and effortless. It’s a sound that feels earned more than perfected, and it’s a beautiful thing to experience. MATTHEW SINGER. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $18 advance, $20 day of show. 21+.
Artichoke Music’s 40th Anniversary: Richard Colombo, Kate Power and Steve Einhorn, Anne Weiss and more [FOLKIE BIRTHDAY] Artichoke Music’s store was known as the
CONT. on page 40
WHITE ORANGE SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 [HEAVINESS] For most bands, the rehearsal space that White Orange uses would be more square footage than they could ever need. The huge room, tucked into the back of a nondescript building in North Portland’s industrial corridor, boasts 20-foot ceilings and a massive stage for live-show practice. White Orange, however, has filled up almost every inch of it. A large silk-screening station sits in one corner. In the middle of the room, two trap kits face each other practically begging for a drumoff. A bong sits prominently on a cluttered coffee table. The walls are covered with original art and posters—among them, a framed copy of the band’s first 10-inch record. “We put that out before we even had a band,” shaggy-haired singer/guitarist Dustin Hill says with a raspy laugh. “We just figured, ‘Fuck it. Let’s get these songs out there.’” “Fuck it” pretty well sums up the overriding philosophy of this psych-rock outfit. Not that White Orange lacks ambition. Hill and his bandmates (drummer Dean Carroll, bassist Adam Pike and guitarist Ryan McIntire) love big projects, especially where vinyl is concerned. The band’s last 12-inch was a picture disc decorated with all manner of demons and religious iconography, and its new self-titled album is housed in a triple-gatefold cover. The band likes its cover art—an expansive psychedelic image in orange and blue, reminiscent of the cover to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew—so much that it plans to buy the $40,000 Raul Casillas Romo source painting. Of course, pretty pictures aren’t the only reason people are starting to pay attention to White Orange. The new record is a logical step for the worlds of psychedelic, stoner and heavy rock, pulsating with an inescapable energy and white-hot intensity. The band doesn’t shy away from its influences, either. Expansive jams “Dinosaur Bones” and “Color Me Black” feature clear nods to deified groups such as King Crimson and Pink Floyd—though Hill is just as quick to note Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. as influences. It’s a lot of backstory for a band with such humble roots. Hill started writing material for White Orange after failed attempts to create some new music for one of his other projects, the slinkier, sexier rock outfit Black Pussy. He pulled in his buddy McIntire to lay down demos (found on the out-of-print 10-inch) and, inspired by the output, started to build a full band. “We didn’t even tell Dean he was auditioning to be in the group,” McIntire says. “We just jammed with him for a few weeks to make sure it was the right fit. It’s gathering the pieces and getting ready for battle.” Despite that combative language, what marks the band as a high-functioning collective is the bond the members obviously share. It’s a friendship born out of jam sessions and the occasional use of psychedelics, both of which, Hill says, helped White Orange to “sever from this dimension and not care and just be honest. “It’s true with any kind of art,” Hill says. “You just have to do it.” ROBERT HAM. White Orange likes everything to be big and loud.
SEE IT: White Orange plays Saturday, Sept. 17, at the Ash Street Saloon with Ancient Warlocks and Brokaw. 9:30 pm. $3. 21+. White Orange also plays an in-store at Music Millenium on Sunday, Sept. 18. 6 pm. Free. All ages.
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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SATURDAY - MONDAY JOSEPH PERSINGER
MUSIC
Wednesday, Sept 14th
COLIN HAY Friday, Sept 16th
LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE
a night of stand-up comedy Saturday, Sept 17th
ARTICHOKE MUSIC
40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION!
Sunday, Sept 18th
STELLAMARA and
ADAM HURST
Thursday, Sept 22nd
Storyhill
Mare Wakefield Saturday, Sept 24th
TWO SHOWS!
GIT OFFA MUH PORCH: Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band plays Dante’s on Tuesday. brick-and-mortar heartbeat of the Portland folk and songwriting scene years before it snagged real estate on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in 1997. The move to a larger space helped married musicians and cofounders Steve Einhorn and Kate Power build practice rooms to house guitar teachers as well as a performance space where an eclectic set of global musicians continue to play their traveling woes through words, wind and string instruments. Since then, Artichoke has changed hands and gained nonprofit status, but Steve and Kate continue to watch their baby grow. This year, that baby turns 40, and a long list of singing storytellers are ready to celebrate onstage. Even Kate and Steve (along with one of Artichoke’s current owners, Richard Colombo) will play some knee-slappin’ bluegrass at Saturday’s birthday bash, as will Portland natives Bitterroot, Sky in the Road and more. NIKKI VOLPICELLI. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 8 pm. $25. All ages.
The Album Leaf, Sister Crayon
[ATMOSPHERICS] Jimmy LaValle’s music is so soothing that his 10 years of songwriting have felt like one beautifully slow year on Valium. The ambient-electronica maestro has inflated Album Leaf’s sound over the years, to a dreamy, swollen state of subconsciousness best heard in 2010’s Chorus of Storytellers. Relying as much on his brilliant backing band as himself, LaValle shadows pretty and persistent melodies with the spot-on percussion of David LeBleu and the crystalline string work of Matt Resovich. The result is a musical version of an ant farm, with every individual contributing to the many textures of the greater good. MARK STOCK. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
Boo Frog, F-Holes, Truth Vibration soundtrack of the 80s with
THE RADICAL REVOLUTION Sunday, Sept 25th
SHOOK TWINS & & CATHERINE
MACLELLAN
Coming Soon... 9/23 Live Wire Radio 9/28 Preston Reed 9/29 Sam Wegman CD release • Tyler Stenson • Safire 9/30 Gypsy Fuzz CD Release • Ellis
Alberta Rose Theatre (503) 764-4131 3000 NE Alberta AlbertaRoseTheatre.com
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
[PDX ROOTS MUSIC] Boo Frog is the Portland band that best pays tribute to both the Fuggs’ whimsical, poetic ’60s humor and Ween’s psychedelic mid’90s silliness. Drenched in reverbstrewn low-fi credibility, Boo Frog eschews songwriting convention and puts its songs first. With members who’ve shared the stage with every punk band that mattered from Portland’s 1980s music scene—co-founder Chris Newman is perhaps better known for his work in Napalm Beach—Boo Frog knows the music is all that matters. Always independent, the band just released Better Than the Rest on vinyl in July of this year, followed shortly thereafter by the Undead at Satyricon live cassette. So if you want to see some real-deal musical history that the cool kids were into when you were just a pup, check Boo Frog out. JOHN ISAACSON. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9:30 pm. $6. 21+.
SUNDAY, SEPT. 18 Montrose, Michael Lee Firkins
[CLASSIC SHREDDER] His legend-
ary status already assured through essential Van Morrison and Edgar Winter recordings prior to founding the eponymous seminal hardrock troupe generally thought the original American metal outfit (though related arguments shall outlast the species), Ronnie Montrose brought a distinctly Californian style to the nascent shredding community. The lifelong hunter was undeniably the first to combine firearms and fretwork, until intraband disintegration led to decades in the session work/ experimental wilderness. Battling back from cancer and justifiable bitterness, he’s touring an incarnation of the classic act that influenced a generation of rather more richly compensated guitar heroes, for better (the Montrose producer who left to shape Van Halen) or worse (the Montrose singer who left to become Sammy Hagar). JAY HORTON. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show (Minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian). All ages.
Bush, Dead Sara
[ALT-ROCK] Ever since a brief flourish of ’90s Anglophilia, we’ve always associated Gavin Rossdale and David Beckham—striking features, poor hair decisions, rather more interesting wives, that rosy patina of untroubled success more American than British—and vaguely admired their daft visions, whether bringing soccer to Los Angeles or grunge to Primrose Hill. After a certain age, though, quixotic turns creepy; before “reuniting” a newly trimmed Bush (only the drummer remains) for a new self-released album and fitfully received tour (hired guns rendering riffage-by-numbers for a famously derivative songbook) as a remedy for house-husband doldrums, maybe it would be better just to hang up the cleats? JAY HORTON. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8 pm. $25. All ages.
MONDAY, SEPT. 19 UFO
[HARD ROCK] While fame, coke and the rising price of hair conditioner drove many 1970s hard-rock bands into an early grave, Britain’s UFO has managed to maintain a consistent recorded output for four decades. Founded in 1969, UFO was a stylistic contemporary of Led Zeppelin, helping to build a bridge between ’60s straightup rock and the heavy metal that would blow up in the next decade. Perhaps because it never achieved the superhuman fame of some of its compatriots, UFO never saw cause to self-destruct, opting instead to spend the decades shuffling its membership and putting out no fewer than 20 LPs, the most recent of which was 2009’s The Visitor. SHANE DANAHER. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. 21+.
MONDAY - TUESDAY
Colour Revolt, Colourmusic, Priory
Portland Piano Series: Uri Caine
[CRASH-PROG] Stillwater, Okla., is known more for dust storms and twangy bar music than unabashed, highly fortified wallop rock. But in a backwards sort of way, Colourmusic makes a lot of sense. It’s shiftiness, discontent and experimental nature are the products of being stifled some at home. Sophomore release My ___ Is Pink is a liberation of sorts, the sonic encapsulation of angst and a crushing eagerness to be heard. This evening’s show promises to be doubly colourful thanks to similarly named headliner Colour Revolt, a Mississippian fuzz-rock outfit known for breaking strings and causing a ruckus. MARK STOCK. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $10. All ages.
[JAZZY CLASSICAL] The many trysts between classical and jazz music have produced some magnificent work by the likes of John Lewis and Miles Davis and Gil Evans, and even a few gems from the classical side—but also plenty of fluff. Vibrant virtuoso Uri Caine counts cred in both camps, from his study with modern classical masters George Rochberg and George Crumb, and in his various ensembles and sideman appearances with jazz masters Dave Douglas, John Zorn and Don Byron. In this Portland Piano International solo concert, he’ll show all his many sides—from jazz standards to classical works by Mahler and Mozart, as well as originals and free improvisation. Each selection will influence the others, so don’t expect pure anything, except imaginative musicianship. BRETT CAMPBELL. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 2319663. 8 pm. $15. 21+.
TUESDAY, SEPT. 20 James McMurtry
The Flaming Lips, Le Butcherettes
[LONESOME ROVE] Though it’ll be some time before his own burgeoning reputation wholly steps out of the shadow of his novelist-screenwriter father, James McMurtry, with his rawboned Americana, has assembled a sizable amen corner across the country among folks who might not much care for cowboy stories. Inheriting the family gift for sharply delineated narratives of hard-luck characters staggering toward the ever-shrinking promise of the West— evocative portraits more intoned than sung above simmering roots rock—the Austin mainstay won new attention with the political provocations of 2008’s Just Us Kids, but his most harrowing moments focus on tales without clear-cut villains. JAY HORTON. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694.
[SWEEPING UP THE PLAIN] Fans keeping to the coasts of a once alternative nation have essentially given up trying to comprehend the special relationship connecting the Flaming Lips and their home state of Oklahoma. We know the group belongs to the land, and the land it belongs to sounds either grand—the staunchly conservative legislature nevertheless honoring the psychedelia vets with an official song and a designated alley—or a fantastical caprice dreamt by shaman-provocateur-godhead Wayne Coyne. ’Midst a typically overheated summer schedule fit to bursting with bizarre collaborations (Lightning Bolt, Prefuse 73, with Death Cab and Weezer on deck), increasingly experimental singles (February’s requiring 12 synchronized computers for proper playback), and the group’s own irreplaceable traveling cavalcade, Coyne recently announced plans to record a six-hour track as benefit
[DIY HIP-HOP] As funny as it sounds, Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree is punk rock, straight up. It may not sound like it (although some of producer Lazerbeak’s beats thrash and bang at a similar pace), but the collective’s members craft hard-edged commentary that challenges the mainstream in the same way. One of its members, Minnesotaborn rapper Sims, with his husky croak of a voice and his complicated rhyme schemes, is particularly good at pointing out what’s wrong with the world today. His latest release, Bad Time Zoo, is a complicated journey into belly of commercialism, political cynicism and mind-rotting technology. It’s not all cynical clanging, though; Sims’ message is often full of empowerment and hope. This is the kind of concert that requires crowd participation: fists in the air, moshing on the floor and a desire to change the world in the hearts of showgoers. REED JACKSON. Branx, 320 SE 2nd Ave., 234-5683. 8 pm. $10. All ages.
Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Austin Lucas, Sassparilla
[SOUTHERN STOMP ROCK] Just how big is Rev. Peyton’s Big Damn Band? Well, only three members big, but they’re all a bit girthy. The name of the Indiana trio, however, is anything but misleading. Smashing together git box (both slide and standard), washboards, drums and bass, the band crafts an enormous sound, a rowdy-as-fuck blend of back-porch country, raw Delta blues and gritty Southern rock, all of which is pounded home by driving beats, call-and-response melodies and the Rev’s garbled Southern yowl. Touring in support of July’s Peyton on Patton, a tribute to legendary Delta bluesman Charley Patton, the Big Damn Band returns to Portland with enough moonshineinduced energy to send feet stomping through the floor. AP KRYZA. Dante’s, 350 W Burnside St., 2266630. 9 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.
A N D R E N I C K AT I N A . C O M
Sims with Lazerbeak, Cecil Otter with Paper Tiger, Speaker Minds, Cloudy October
MUSIC
for Central Oklahoma institutions devastated by Hurricane Irene. JAY HORTON. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-745-3000. 8 pm. $49.50-$64. All ages.
Cougar, Gaytheist, Monogamy Party
[FILTHY, FURIOUS HARD ROCK] The Northwest has become a breeding ground for heavy rock outfits that stick to the heaviest of instruments: drums and bass guitar. GodHead Silo, Karp and Big Business all followed this template—and now the thrilling Monogamy Party. The Seattle trio uses rhythm section-only instrumentation to tear at the fabric of the rock universe, augmented by a wiry, bearded gent vocalist known as Kennedy. The singer takes cues from icons like Iggy Pop and David Yow, throwing every part of his body into his performances and coming away bruised, battered and smiling broadly. ROBERT HAM. Kenton Club, 2025 N Kilpatrick St., 285-3718. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Gulls, Strategy, Etbonz
[ELECTRONIC FUNK] Jesse Munro Johnson crafts some of the most cinematic electronic dance-floor jams in Portland as Gulls—a moniker under which he’s as prone to subtle ambient exploration as big-beat electro fare—and he’s keeping his Boomarm Nation label busy with releases as of late. The newest, a Gulls 12-inch called the Boom Miami EP, sees release at this Valentine’s engagement. It opens with the crunchy, convulsing and pulsing title track, which is uniquely fit to popping and locking. The B-side, “Cesco Chavo,” is overdriven and dramatic—coming in and out of phase with vintage click-beats and hyperactive digital shakers as it comes to a head near the five-minute mark. The claustrophobic dance floor at Valentine’s seems as fine a place as any to start the party. Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St., 2481600. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
PRIMER
BY R EED JACKSON
ANDRE NICKATINA Born: March 11, 1970, in San Francisco. Sounds like: A nerve-racking conversation with a sketchy, welldressed character in a dark strip club. For fans of: Mac Dre, Rappin 4-Tay, Spice 1, Too Short Latest release: My Middle Name Is Crime, an EP made for a quick buck with Bay Area heavy hitter the Jacka. The disc is full of half-hearted verses and weak song concepts. Nicky releases a lot of material—sometimes it’s great, sometimes it sucks. Why you care: In 1995, Andre Nickatina—then known as Dre Dog—released his sophomore album, I Hate You With a Passion, a record that drew a lot of attention (and his only chart showing) for its straightforward take on the grimy street happenings of San Francisco’s Fillmore neighborhood. Since then, Dre Dog has changed his name, released about 10 albums (not including collaborations) and gotten, well, a little weird. At some point, Nicky started rapping about some really random shit (especially food), giving his street persona a ridiculousness that has made him a favorite among college students—similar to fellow tough-yet-goofy rappers Lil’ Wayne and Cam’ron. Nickatina’s brand of oddball drug rap isn’t the only reason he’s remained relevant, though; he has a proven track record of creating quality bangers—from the Equipto-assisted “Jungle” to the dollar-sniffing anthem “Ayo.” The 41-year-old has been performing shows in Oregon regularly for more than a decade (rumor has it he comes up to check on Nicky’s Gentlemen’s Club, a strip joint he owns in Springfield) and has a reputation of sometimes being too high, drunk or angry to perform. Like his music, though, when he gives his A-game, Nicky—a sly-mouthed gangster MC with a quirky imagination who makes music you can shake your ass to—is a blast to be around. SEE IT: Andre Nickatina plays the Roseland Theater on Friday, Sept. 16, with Mistah F.A.B. 8 pm. $25. All ages. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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www.underdogportland.com (503) 282-1155 42
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
MUSIC CALENDAR = WW Pick. Highly recommended. Editor: Jonathan Frochtzwajg. TO HAVE YOUR EVENT LISTED, send show information at least two weeks in advance on the web at wweek.com/submitevents or (if you book a specific venue) enter your events at dbmonkey.com/wweek. Press kits, CDs and especially vinyl can be sent to Music Desk, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Please include show or release date information with all physical mailings. Email: music@wweek.com.
[SEPT. 14 - 20] Open Mic with Go Fuck Yerself
6ix, Illa, Vocab, Mikey Vegaz, Juma BlaQ, Stevo
Rotture
Backspace
315 SE 3rd Ave. Log Across The Washer, The We Shared Milk, Cat Stalks Bird
Sleep Country Amphitheater
For more listings, check out wweek.com. ADAM KRUEGER
17200 NE Delfel Road, Ridgefield, Wash. Def Leppard, Heart
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Youthbitch, The Cry, Gunparty
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Fenix Project Jam Session
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Arabesque Bellydance
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Renaissance Cocktail
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Karla Harris
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Mugen Huso, Welsh Bowmen
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Karen Maria Capo
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Nancy King
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. Gordon Lee, Duncan Branom, Ed Bennett
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Left Coast Country
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar
102 NE Russell St. The Javier Nero Quintet
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Casey Neill
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Alpha Rev, Tyler Stenson
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Colin Hay, Chris Trapper
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Open Mic
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
1037 SW Broadway Thievery Corporation
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Xachary Robert, De La Warr
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Robin Greene
510 NW 11th Ave. Sam Adams Band
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Greater Midwest, Stand Back, The Forgotten Ones
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); High Flyer Trio (6 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Crimson Scarlet, Bellicose Minds, Atrocity Exhibition, Moral Hex, DJ Sandy Stilletto
East India Co.
821 SW 11th Ave. Josh Feinberg
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place Lubec, Useless Keys, Slow Bird, Little Beirut
Fez Ballroom
316 SW 11th Ave. Raquy and the Cavemen, Ritim Egzotik
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. Laura Ivancie
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Get Scared, Dr. Acula, Girl On Fire, Elenora, The Reeds Mill Investgation
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Renee Muzquiz
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Quartet
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Barkers
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Drunk on Pines (9 pm); Green State (6 pm)
Lola’s Room at the Crystal Ballroom 1332 W Burnside St. The DEFiBULATORs
McMenamins Edgefield Little Red Shed 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Bobby Bare, Jr.
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Billy D
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave.
Am & Shawn Lee, Marius Libman
Union Station, 800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen with John Gilmore, Phil Bake
Moon & Sixpence
2014 NE 42nd Ave. Lewi Longmire Band
Mt. Tabor Theater Lounge
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Reefer Madness
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Stumbleweed
Newmark Theatre
1111 SW Broadway Deva Premal & Miten, Manose
O’Connors
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte
PCPA Antoinette Hatfield Hall 1111 SW Broadway Portland Taiko
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Billy Kennedy
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Swing Papillon
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave.
510 NW 11th Ave. Lee Penn Sky, Zay Harrison
Chapel Pub
430 N Killingsworth St. Steve Kerin
Corkscrew Wine Bar 1669 SE Bybee Blvd. Clifford Koufman Trio
Dante’s
830 E Burnside St. Cake
Doug Fir Lounge
350 W Burnside St. Stanton Moore Trio
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Anna Paul and the Bearded Lady (9 pm); Portland Playboys (6 pm)
East End
Ella Street Social Club
531 SE 14th Ave. Time-Based Art Festival: Claudia Meza, Liz Harris (of Grouper) with Flash Choir, Tashi Wada
Camellia Lounge
Camellia Lounge
The Old Church
The Works at Washington High School
WED. SEPT. 14
2201 N Killingsworth St. Loose Change Trio
421 SE Grand Ave. Nothing Lasts Forever 1422 SW 11th Ave. David Rothman
Afrique Bistro
Beaterville Cafe
203 SE Grand Ave. Kitchen’s Floor, Fat History Month, Pacific City Nightlife Vision Band, Fuzzy Cloaks
The Lovecraft
BLAST-OFF BLUES: Bob Log III plays Dante’s on Friday, Sept. 16.
115 NW 5th Ave. Cobra Skulls, Ninjas with Syringes, Lost City, Angry Lions
THURS. SEPT. 15 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Casey Neill
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Cecilio and Kapono
Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Jess & Tom Lageson (9:30 pm); The How Long Jug Band (6:30 pm)
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Matices
Andrea’s Cha Cha Club 832 SE Grand Ave. Dina & Bamba Y Su Pilon D’Azucar with La Descarga Cubana
Artichoke Community Music 3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Songwriters Roundup
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St.
714 SW 20th Place Tiger House, Elba, Your Rival
Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave. Matt Brown One-Man Band
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Jesta, High Ceiling
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. Anthony Brady
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
1503 SE 39th Ave. Savoir Faire Burlesque
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Saxon Stites, Kristen Hewitt, Black Black Things, Me Myself & Insanity
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. The Defibulators
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Old Highway, Prick and the Burn, Sistafist
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Dodgy Mountain Boys, Dust Settlers (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Jon Koonce
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Billy Kennedy
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Focus! Focus! (9 pm); Monica Taylor (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Amy LaVere, Noah Gundersen
Mock Crest Tavern
3435 N Lombard St. Shoeshine Blue, Fitzhume
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Terry Robb
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Blow Up Dolls, Steaknife, Bonneville Power, S.F.A., Adrian Bourgeois
James Hill & Anne Davison, Kate Power & Steve Einhorn, Aaron Keim & Neil McCormick
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs Trio
Roseland Theater
Artichoke Community Music
Secret Society Lounge
Ash Street Saloon
8 NW 6th Ave. Candlebox, Lotus Crush, American Bastard, Miggs 116 NE Russell St. Molly’s Revenge, Colleen Raney
Sellwood Public House
8132 SE 13th Ave. Open Mic with Two Rivers
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Jonathan Huntress, Wayne Waits
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Mitten, Mnemonic Sounds, Night Surgeon (9 pm); Happy Hour DJs (4 pm)
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Hawkeye, Miracle Falls, DJ Bar Hopper
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Soriah
Sylvan Steakhouse
5515 SW Canyon Court Lucas Cozby
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Alan Jones Jam
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Johnny Martin
The Hobnob Grille
3350 SE Morrison St. Open Mic
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. The Mermaid Problem, Jetpack Mistresses, No More Parachutes
3130A SE Hawthorne Blvd. Friday Night Coffeehouse 225 SW Ash St. The Vibrators, Shock Troops, The Israelites, Drunken Debauchery
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Music in the Schools Showcase: Squid Attack, Charts, Profcal, Fringe Class
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Icarus The Owl, Asteroid M, All Falls Through, Summer Soundtrack
Camellia Lounge
510 NW 11th Ave. Rich Halley Quartet
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Elite
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. Devo
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Bob Log III, Mr. Free & The Satellite Freakout
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Just Like Vinyl, Ape Machine, Shelter Red, Rags & Ribbons
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Johnny Cash Tribute (9 pm); Honey and the Hamdogs (6 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Kinks/Punk Tribute: Carnabetian Army, Jim Jams, DJ Chris O’ Connor
The Woods
El Centro Milagro
Thirsty Lion
Ford Food and Drink
Tonic Lounge
Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. Matt the Electrician, Blind Bartimaeus 71 SW 2nd Ave. Hair Assault 3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Key of Solomon, Glassbones, A Happy Death
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. Swing Dance Night
525 SE Stark St. La Luna Nueva Festival: Jessie Marquez 2505 SE 11th Ave. Tim Roth, Bill Mullen
527 E Main St., Hillsboro Oregon Mandolin Orchestra with The Journeymen, bass mandolin
Gotham Tavern
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
2240 N Interstate Ave. Fez Fatale
White Eagle Saloon
11525 SW Barnes Road Sons of Richard
2929 SE Powell Blvd. Hilary Negus
836 N Russell St. Bob Shoemaker (8:30 pm); Lincoln Crockett (5:30 pm)
FRI. SEPT. 16 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Casey Neill (7 pm); Poison Waters and Friends (5:30 pm)
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. David Bromberg, Ollabelle
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St. Laughter is the Best Medicine: They’re Heading West
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St.
Grapevine Restaurant and Lounge
Greeley Avenue Bar & Grill 5421 N Greeley Ave. Twisted Whistle
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge 625 NW 21st Ave. Ken Hanson Band
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Ron Rogers
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Deathtrap America
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Audrey Ebbs (8 pm); Ronno Rutter (6 pm)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Ezra Weiss Sextet
CONT. on page 44
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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MUSIC
CALENDAR
BAR SPOTLIGHT
Linda Lee Michelet Big Band
N ATA L I E B E H R I N G . C O M
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Rich Layton & The Troublemakers
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Violet Isle, Dropa, Brothers Young (9:30 pm); Reverb Brothers (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar
Union Station, 800 NW 6th Ave. Michael Allen Harrison
SAT. SEPT. 17 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Casey Neill
TIKI TACKY: There are many reasons to resent the resurrection of Trader Vic’s (1203 NW Glisan St., 467-2277, tradervicspdx.com) immediately upon entry to its new Pearl dives: The wooden idols bearing torches on the sidewalk, the waterfall in the foyer, the decor twinned to Disney’s Polynesian Resort, the menu plastered with mortifyingly named items like the “Maui Waui” Shrimp. (It does not help that when you faintly order the shrimp, the waitress replies cheerfully, “The Maui Waui?”) Yet it is nearly impossible to hold a grudge against the return of the Bay Area-bred franchise, not after devouring a $3 basket of fries with curry ketchup, and especially not upon realizing that two of the signature $8 Mai Tais— pebbled with hailstones of ice and sweeter than the love of some foreign god—are capable of making you forget your surroundings entirely. AARON MESH.
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Low, Bachelorette
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Artichoke Music’s 40th Anniversary: Richard Colombo, Kate Power and Steve Einhorn, Anne Weiss, Leela Grace, Matt Meighan, Dan’l, DonnaLynn, Sky in the Road, Bitterroot
Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Josh & Mer, The Welcome Matt, Jon Garcia Band
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka Trio
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. White Orange, Ancient Warlocks, Brokaw
Backspace Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Transient Benefit: Valkyrie Rodeo, Stag Bitten, Muscle Beach, Tyrants, Fall the Giants
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Freak Mountain Ramblers (9:30 pm); Portland Country Underground (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Scott Gallegos
McMenamins Edgefield 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Cake
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Josh Cole Band
Memorial Coliseum
1401 N Wheeler Ave. Zac Brown Band, Sonia Leigh, Nic Cowan
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Thumptown (9 pm); The Old States (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. The Growlers, Fidlar, Night Moves
Mock Crest Tavern 3435 N Lombard St. Adequates
Papa G’s Vegan Organic Deli
2314 SE Division St. Lynn Conover
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Dispirit, Atriarch, Noctus
Plew’s Brews
8409 N Lombard St. Bumpin’ Nastys, Wester Daywick
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Michael Berly, Jesse Bettis
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Final Offense, Skatterbomb, Item 9, The Longshots, Vamanos
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. Andre Nickatina, Mistah Fab
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. Schicky Gnarowitz (9 pm); AnnaPaul & The Bearded Lady (6 pm)
Sellwood Public House 8132 SE 13th Ave. Woody Moran
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave. Minty Rosa
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. PRND, Rollerball, Weirding Module
Someday Lounge
Muddy Rudder Public House
125 NW 5th Ave. Sambada, Axe Dide
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Sonny Hess
8105 SE 7th Ave. Mike Brosnian
Spare Room
4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
Star Theater
Northwest Portland Hostel
Sylvan Steakhouse
425 NW 18th Ave. Anne Weiss
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. D.K. Stewart
44
13 NW 6th Ave. Gilby Clarke 5515 SW Canyon Court Morgan Grace (8:30 pm); Steve Mariman (6 pm)
Ted’s/Berbati’s Pan 231 SW Ankeny St.
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
Warrior King, Biggaton, King Hopton, Small Axe Sounds with YT
115 NW 5th Ave. Covox, Bud Melvin, Mechlo
Beaterville Cafe
The Blue Monk
2201 N Killingsworth St. D.C. Malone and The Jones
The Foggy Notion
Biddy McGraw’s
3341 SE Belmont St. Offbeat Bellydance 3416 N Lombard St. Dunbar Number, Cadet
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Bobby Torres Trio
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. The Fasters, Golden Motors, Pellet Gun
6000 NE Glisan St. NoPoMoJo
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. My Mantle, His Legacy, Her Death and After, Apollo
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. Kevin Devine, The Features
The Know
Camellia Lounge
The Lovecraft
Clyde’s Prime Rib
Thirsty Lion
Community Music Center
2026 NE Alberta St. Arterial Spray, Sceptre 421 SE Grand Ave. Bryan Minus and The Disconnect 71 SW 2nd Ave. The Rock Doctors
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway A Moment of Substance, Outland Prey, Rem Brandt
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Mosby, Rare Monk, CC Swim
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Tony Starlight Show
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Martin Zarzar Trio
Trail’s End Saloon
1320 Main St., Oregon City Randy Hansen, Twice Baked
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Zmoke, Sceptre, Technocide
Vie de Boheme 1530 SE 7th Ave.
510 NW 11th Ave. Negara
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Elite
3350 SE Francis St. Brothers of the Baladi with Delilah, House of Tarab
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Smoochknob, The Smoochgirls, Poison Us, Cellar Door
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. The Album Leaf, Sister Crayon
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. D.K. Stewart Sextet
El Centro Milagro
525 SE Stark St. La Luna Nueva Festival: Gerardo Calderón, Correa Aereo
Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave. Celtic Muse
Glenn & Viola Walters Cultural Arts Center 527 E Main St., Hillsboro
Oregon Mandolin Orchestra with The Journeymen, Bass Mandolin, Duo LaRe
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Marv Ellis and the Platform, Mosley Wotta, Worth, Bondy
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Grave, Blood Red Throne, Pathology, Gigan, Wild Boar Cannery
Hopworks Urban Brewery
2944 SE Powell Blvd. BikeToBeerFest: Brownish Black, Oh Darling, Jared Mees & The Grown Children, The Ascetic Junkies, Wanderlust Circus
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. David Griggs (8 pm); Suzanne Tufan (6 pm)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Soul Vaccination
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Sugarcane, Fast Rattler, Irish Family Hooley, Matthew HaywardMacDonald, Hanz Araki & Kathryn Claire
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Drats!, Tiny Knives, The Sugar Skulls
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. The James Low Western Front, Drunken Prayer, Fleur Jack (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)
Lents Commons
9201 SE Foster Road Leafeater, The Deadcoats, Tyler Holmes, Bigger Than Mountains, Mat Ridenour
McMenamins Edgefield Little Red Shed
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Amy LaVere Quartet (6 pm); Johnny Connelly Trio (3:30 pm); Old Yellers (1 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Carley Baer Trio, The Druids
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Garcia Birthday Band
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. School of Rock: ‘80s HairMetal
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. BrassRoots Movement (9 pm); Alan Alexander’s Real Time Band (6 pm); Mr. Ben (4 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Wild Ones, Cataldo, Forest Park
Mock Crest Tavern
3435 N Lombard St. Johnnie Ward Sharkskin Review
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Steve Cheseborough
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe 4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
Ocean’s Edge Wayside Highway 101 & S. First St., Rockaway Beach Rocktoberfest: Deathgrass, Blue Bullet Band, Tillamooks, The Exiles, Rudefish
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Amy Keys
Pioneer Courthouse Square
701 SW 6th Ave. The Satin Chaps, The Hot LZs, Cootie Platoon, Runaway Wheels, DJ Hwy 7, The Ghost Train
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Wayne Gacy Trio, Delaney & Paris, Mr. Plow, Ninja, Clackamas Baby Killers
Planned Parenthood 3231 SE 50th Ave. Grey for Days
Plew’s Brews
8409 N Lombard St. Blue Iris, Irie Idea
Press Club
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar
Union Station, 800 NW 6th Ave. Dick Berk Trio
SUN. SEPT. 18 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Violet Isle
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Montrose, Michael Lee Firkins
Alberta Rose Theatre 3000 NE Alberta St. Stellamara, Adam Hurst
2621 SE Clinton St. Shicky Gnarowitz and Meester & Meester
Andina
Red Room
Ash Street Saloon
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Attackhead, After Everything, Livid Minds, Ditchdigger, Key of Solomon, Boston T-Rex, Nemesis
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave. Blue October
Sellwood Public House 8132 SE 13th Ave. Fare Thee Wells
Slabtown
1033 NW 16th Ave. The Electric Sheep, First Issues
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Jackbone Dixie
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Cool Breeze
Sylvan Steakhouse
5515 SW Canyon Court Gaea Schell
The Back Alley Bar & Grill
6503 E Mill Plain Blvd., Vancouver, Wash. Drop Dead Legs (Van Halen tribute)
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. The Waydowns
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Dogtooth
The Heathman Restaurant and Bar 1001 SW Broadway Karla Harris
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Bombs Into You, Fierce Bad Rabbitt, Monoplane
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. The Bradley Band
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Veio, Seven Reasons, Set In Stone
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Boo Frog, F-Holes, Truth Vibration
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Midnight Serenaders
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Kelley Shannon Trio with Randy Porter
Twilight Café and Bar
1420 SE Powell Blvd. Dr Stahl, 8ft. Tender, The Disciples of Rock & Roll
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. Everything’s Jake
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Supervisor & Get Rhythm
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Brongaene Griffin, Cul An Ti, Channing Dodson Band, Nancy Conescu, Mike Doolin Duo (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
1314 NW Glisan St. Danny Romero 225 SW Ash St. Random Diversity, Sunny Travels
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Ron Steen Jazz Jam
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Sinferno Cabaret (11 pm); Shine with Geoff Byrd (9 pm)
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Skell, The Bloodtypes, Battle Stations, Dikes of Holland
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place The Lower 48, Robin Bacior, Cristina Cano, Sabrina Fountain
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
1503 SE 39th Ave. Joe Buck Yourself, Destroy Nate Allen, Davey Death Ray
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Kris Deelane
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott (9:30 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Jack McMahon
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Hanz Araki & Kathryn Claire
Millennium Plaza Park on Lakewood Bay
200 1st St., Lake Oswego Tunes for Tots Festival: The Alphabeticians, Van Oodles, Snail People, Matt Clark Music, Olive Rootbeer
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Outland Prey (9 pm); Wicky Pickers (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Johnny A.
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Irish Music
NEPO 42
5403 NE 42nd Ave. Open Mic
Ocean’s Edge Wayside Highway 101 & S. First St., Rockaway Beach Rocktoberfest: Wil Duncan, Mercury, Ocean Bottom Blues Band, The Oyster Shooters
Roseland Theater 8 NW 6th Ave. Bush, Dead Sara
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Pioneers West, Sun Kids, Aaron Bergeson
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St.
Nopomojo
St. Josef’s Winery
28836 S Barlow Road, Canby Petty Theft
Star Theater
13 NW 6th Ave. Cabaret Coiffure
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Sorta Bison
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. The Trainwreckers
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Flash Flood and the Dikes, Roary Chaos, The Welfare State
Tillicum Club
8585 SW BeavertonHillsdale Highway Johnny Martin
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Cabaret/Kabaret with Kurt Raimer and Gretchen Rumbaugh
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. May May, Ora Cogan, Love Menu
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Bitterroot
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Open Mic
MON. SEPT. 19 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. Violet Isle
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. UFO
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Teresa Strorch
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. Foam Lake, Shuyler Jansen
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Battery-Powered Music
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Robbers On High Street, Allah-Lahs, Mansions
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suzie and the Sidecars
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Open Mic
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Dan Balmer Band
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Kung Pao Chickens
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Skip vonKuske, Will West
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Bob Shoemaker
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Mr. Ben
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Colour Revolt, Colourmusic, Priory
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
O’Connors
7850 SW Capitol Highway Kit Garoutte
CALENDAR Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Rainy River Blues Experience
Secret Society Lounge
116 NE Russell St. Carlton Jackson, Dave Mills Big Band
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Renato Caranto Project
The Globe
2045 SE Belmont St. Hank Hirsh’s Jazz Lounge & Open Jam
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Toning, Yximalloo, DJ Davis Cleveland
Tube
18 NW 3rd Ave. Ruby Feathers, The Verner Pantons, DJ Tobias, DJ Feathers
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Eternal Tapestry, Witch Hat, Jewelry Rash
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. July Sky, Riviera
TUES. SEPT. 20 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. Violet Isle
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. James McMurtry
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Neftali Rivera
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St.
Jobo Shakins, The Old Family Circus, Poor Boy’s Soul
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Saint Warhead, Kublakai, Naughty Moniz
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Sims with Lazerbeak, Cecil Otter with Paper Tiger, Speaker Minds, Cloudy October
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Open Mic
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. DoublePlusGood, Youth
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Jazz Jam
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. The Script, Hot Chelle Rae
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Austin Lucas, Sassparilla
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Portland Piano Series: Uri Caine
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Body Parts
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Scott PembertonTrio
Gypsy Restaurant & Lounge
The Globe
Hawthorne Theatre
The Knife Shop at Kelly’s Olympian
625 NW 21st Ave. Kent Smith
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Blindside, Write This Down, INTOHIMO, A Tale Through Audio
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Septet (8:30 pm); The Matt Tabor Trio (6:30 pm)
Keller Auditorium
222 SW Clay St. The Flaming Lips, Le Butcherettes
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Android Hero, Gaytheist, Monogamy Party
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Jackstraw
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Lynn Conover and John Mitchell
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Open Bluegrass Jam
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Belinda Underwood
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Allen Stone, Fred Van Vactor
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Pagan Jug Band
SAT. SEPT. 17
2045 SE Belmont St. Robert Stragnell, Sam Emmitt
426 SW Washington St. Leafeater, Earl Patrick, Pecos
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. PDX Singer-Songwriter Showcase
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway The Ed Forman Show with Justin Leon Johnson (of Purple & Green)
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Cat Fancy, The Horoscopes, DJ Calvin Johnson
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Piano Bar with Bo Ayars
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Open Mic with The Roaming
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. Lynn Winkle & Mark Stauffer
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
2929 SE Powell Blvd. Arthur Moore’s Harmonica Party
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Brad Creel and the Reel Deel
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJ I <3 U
Holocene
WED. SEPT. 14 Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Future Beats: Ryan Organ, Brazil, Carrier
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. TRONix: Bryan Zentz
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Nice Up: Selector Dub Narcotic, DJ Sgt. Forkner, DJ Hot Air Balloon
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Grunge Night with Pippa Possible
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Love Monkeys: DJs OverCol, Moderhead
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Bob Ham, DJ Lorax
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. I’ve Got A Hole In My Soul: DJs Beyondadoubt, Primo
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Womb Service
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Nate Preston
FRI. SEPT. 16 Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. Ninjasonik
Ground Kontrol
Tiga
511 NW Couch St. DJ Nate C
Valentine’s
8 NE Killingsworth St. Just Dave
1465 NE Prescott St. Sweet Relish 232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Champagne Jam
THURS. SEPT. 15 Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJ Noah Fence
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Love Crimes: DJ Lunchlady, DJ Girlfriends
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Zia Mcabe (of the Dandy Warhols)
Record Room
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Blank Fridays with DJ Paultimore
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Propaganda
The Woods
6637 SE Milwaukie Ave. In the Detention Hall: Cooky Parker, DDDJJJ666
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Mild Child
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Copy
1001 SE Morrison St. Gaycation: DJs Snowtiger, Mr. Charming
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Stahlwerks with DJ NoN
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Tough Fuzz
Rotture
315 SE 3rd Ave. Bearracuda with DJ 50 Pound Note
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Go French Yourself! with DJ Cecilia Paris
The Crown Room
205 NW 4th Ave. Club Crooks: DJs Izm, Easter Egg, Jerm
The Jack London Bar 529 SW 4th Ave. DJ The R
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Blast
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Hostile Tapeover
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Tropical Depression
SUN. SEPT. 18 Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Abbey with DJ F. Star
MUSIC
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Hive: DJs Owen, Brian Backlash
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Uriah Creep
The Whiskey Bar
31 NW 1st Ave. Deacon X Fetish Night
MON. SEPT. 19 Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Magnolia Bouvier
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Coldyron
TUES. SEPT. 20 East End
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Mike V
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. DJ Ossicle
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. The Great Rock ‘n Roll Show with DJ JD Star
The Whiskey Bar 31 NW 1st Ave. Jaguar Skills with James Steele
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Cowboys From Sweden
Valentine’s 232 SW Ankeny St. Gulls, Strategy, Etbonz
Yes and No
20 NW 3rd Ave. Idiot Tuesdays with DJ Black Dog
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. DJ Disgustor
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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Do Ho Suh â&#x20AC;&#x153;Recent worksâ&#x20AC;? the stephen e. ostrow distinguished visitor in the visual arts series
Net-work, Do Ho Suh
Do Ho Suh was born in Seoul, Korea, and educated at Seoul National University, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Yale University. Interested in the malleability of space in both its physical and metaphorical manifestations, Suh constructs site-specific installations that question the boundaries of identity. His work has been exhibited internationally and is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Tate Modern, London; the Artsonje Center, Seoul; and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, among others. Do Ho Suh lives and works in New York and Seoul.
wednesday, september 21, 2011
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
PERFORMANCE
SEPT. 14-20
MEGAN MANTIA
PREVIEW
TIME AFTER TIME OUR TOP PICKS FOR THE SECOND WEEK OF PICA’S TIME-BASED ART FESTIVAL. Street and 14th Avenue. 6 pm Saturday-6 pm Sunday, Sept. 17-18. $40. Zoe/Juniper, A Crack in Everything Eerie, ominous soundscape? Check. Bizarre video projections? Check. Nudity and people barking like dogs? Check and check. This fascinating collaboration between Seattle choreographer Zoe Scofield and visual artist Juniper Shuey contains many of the usual tropes of avant garde multimedia performance—it just does ’em better than a lot of other shows. Scofield’s sinuous movements and unsettling tableaux, from a man straining on a red dog’s leash to a spotlight capturing a lone figure methodically tracing the shape of her own body on a blackboard, are supremely weird. And Shuey makes eye-catching playthings of light and sound, most notably a smoke cloud that twists and writhes along with the dancers. In some ways A Crack in Everything, which is ostensibly about “the liminal space between action/reaction, cause/effect and before/after” (whatever that means) is far more a mood or dream than a dance. It may also be a nightmare, but it’s a beautiful one. KELLY CLARKE. Lincoln Hall, 1620 SW Park Ave. 8:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, Sept. 15-17. $20. Big Terrific! Brooklyn’s weekly comedy showcase Big Terrific! often promotes itself by dropping the names of the heavyweight comics who’ve performed under its banner over the past three years, stars such as Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman and Aziz
P E T E R DY L A N O ’ CO N N O R
Mike Daisey, All the Hours in the Day Mike Daisey is, at various times, an improvisational storyteller, a big-hearted observer, a lonely expositor of self or a sweat-drenched haranguer from the stage; the term he prefers for this is “monologist.” This is to say, he sits onstage, perilously alone, and talks without a script. It is not comedy, though it is often funny. It is also not theater, though he often speaks with wild performative emphasis (this intensity is amplified by his mammoth, imposing frame and equally mammoth, imposing forehead). What Daisey offers is the opportunity to see an engaging mind at work and play; every performance I’ve seen has been intelligent, punctuated with gripping recognitions and dullish languors, but always brimming with life. He’s made a home out of the TimeBased Art Festival for three years now, but this year it’s a full-fledged talk-in. In his appropriately named All the Hours of the Day, he’ll be up there for 24 straight hours. What once was intimacy will be stretched into endurance, a Last Tango in Portland in which we test the limits of just how much understanding we can all bear together. The program notes compare this endeavor to Scheherazade’s 1001 Nights, and perhaps this is appropriate. The Arabian stories were told to fend off death itself, and a day-long monologue is a no-less-desperate feat. But from this desperation comes, hopefully, something that endures far beyond the telling. Bathroom and meal breaks are, nonetheless, promised. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Washington High School, Southeast Stark
MIKE DAISEY
WHOOP DEE DOO
Ansari. Wise publicity move, but it ignores the true reason the show earned a Best of New York nod in New York Magazine: the improvisational chemistry of its trio of hosts. Of the three, the most recognizable is ex-Saturday Night Live cast member Jenny Slate, whose most memorable moment on the show was detonating an F-bomb in her first episode. She’s more than a network television castoff, though. GQ labeled her “the Princess of Twee Potty Humor,” the “twee” part borne out in her adorably funny Web short, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which she’s developing into a children’s book and TV series. Stand-ups Gabe Liedman and Max Silvestri don’t have the SNL credit, but both have expanding profiles in the underground comedy world. Together, they have grown Big Terrific! into a developmental league of sorts for East Coast comics looking to experiment in front of willing audiences. As for their own collaborative performances, it often looks less like practiced bits than three friends trying to crack each other up. MATTHEW SINGER. Washington High School, Southeast Stark Street and 14th Avenue. 10:30 pm Friday, Sept. 16. $8. 21+. Andrew Dinwiddie, Get Mad at Sin! Call it a “cover sermon”: In Get Mad at Sin!, actor Andrew Dinwiddie faithfully (ahem) recreates a fiery evangelical rant by America’s original rock-star preacher, Jimmy Swaggart. Taken from an out-ofprint recording released in 1971, the tirade is filled with dated references to the evils of miniskirts, the Beatles and the White Panther Party, but Dinwiddie’s one-man show isn’t played for ironic laughs. If there’s any irony to be had, it’s that Swaggart’s astounding oratorical skills and theatrical flair transformed his fundamentalist ravings against popular culture into its own form of show biz. Removed from any true religious context, Dinwiddie’s powerful performance captures a moralizer who was at odds with his own beliefs long before a late ’80s sex scandal made his hypocrisy public. Dressed in a beige suit and tie, Dinwiddie paces the stage, gesticulating wildly as he denounces drugs and homosexuality and advocates horsewhipping parents who
allow rock ’n’ roll records into their home. The heavy-handed rhetoric is bound to induce chuckles from a knowing audience of non-believers, but the fact that these are the words of a once-influential man—and words many still take to heart today— makes the performance more frightening than funny. MATTHEW SINGER. Washington High School, Southeast Stark Street and 14th Avenue. 6:30 pm WednesdaySaturday, Sept. 14-17. $20. Whoop Dee Doo Describing a children’s show as being “on acid” isn’t very helpful—it’s hard to name a program aimed at kids that doesn’t appear to be under the influence of a mind-altering substance—but the lysergic inspiration is particularly strong with Kansas City’s Whoop Dee Doo. A typical show overloads the senses with colors, music and buggedout costumes; it’s as if the Flaming Lips took over the programming at Nickelodeon. Then again, there really isn’t such a thing as a “typical” Whoop Dee Doo show. It’s a variety show with an emphasis on variety. Since it started in 2006, co-founders and hosts Matt Roche and Jaimie Warren—he plays a soft-spoken werewolf, she wears a red spandex outfit adorned with empty food packages—have welcomed everyone from dancing grannies and drag queens to bodybuilders, gospel singers and Civil War re-enactors. (When it staged a production in Sweden, the group held a “hugging contest” with a death-metal band.) It might sound anarchic, but Whoop Dee Doo’s philosophy is rooted in community involvement: In every city it visits, the company works with local kids to help design sets and put together the live show. For TBA, the group collaborated with PICA and mentoring organization Caldera. Expect, well, anything. MATTHEW SINGER. Washington High School, Southeast Stark Street and 14th Avenue. 1 and 4 pm Saturday, Sept. 17. Free. SEE IT: Tickets to all TBA performances may be purchased at PICA’s box office on the campus of Washington High School, at the corner of Southeast Stark Street and 14th Avenue, by phone at 224-7422, or online at pica.org. Individual tickets are $5-$40, festival passes cost between $45 and $250. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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SEPT. 14-20
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Most prices listed are for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and so-called convenience charges may apply, so it’s best to call ahead. Editor: BEN WATERHOUSE. Stage: BEN WATERHOUSE (bwaterhouse@wweek. com). Classical: BRETT CAMPBELL (bcampbell@wweek.com). Dance: HEATHER WISNER (dance@wweek.com). TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit information at least two weeks in advance to: bwaterhouse@wweek.com.
THEATER Annie Get Your Gun
[NEW REVIEW] Lake Oswego’s prosperous Lakewood Theatre tackles the classic Broadway musical about unrefined sharpshooter Annie Oakley’s transformative adventures with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Directed by Ron Daum and performed by a handful of talented familiar faces, Lakewood’s production delivers on all notes. Sara Catherine Wheatley’s shining performance as Annie is the apt highlight, carrying the charm of her innocently mischievous ways from the musical’s beginning to end, whether she’s hunting the bird on vindictive Dolly Tate’s (Stephanie Heuston) hat or covered in medals and wearing “oh day colog-neh water.” The cast’s quality singing (directed by Alan D. Lytle) and dancing (choreography by Joel Walker, who also plays Tommy Keeler) ties it all together. NATALIE BAKER. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 6353901. 7:30 Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7 pm Sundays, Sept. 18 and 25; 2 pm Sundays Oct. 2-16. $32, $29 seniors.
Be Careful! The Sharks Will Eat You!
Actor Jay Alvarez performs his solo show about the Cuban revolution and his family’s escape to Miami in 1964. Alvarez’s performance, which received rave reviews in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, is presented here as part of Miracle Theatre’s La Luna Nueva festival of Latin music and theater. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 2367253. 7:30 pm Monday-Wednesday, Sept. 19-21. $15-$17.
Fight Night
[FUNDRAISER] The Portland Theatre Alliance, an organization that provides support to Portland theater companies and performers, including emergency financial aid to uninsured actors, presents a punchy fundraising event. Fight Night features stage combat and contentious songs and scenes performed by local companies. Perhaps of greater interest to regular readers of these pages, WW theater critic Ben Waterhouse will be one of five fools auctioning off their dignity for the cause: The highest bidder gets to hit that redheaded jerk right in his stupid, smug face with a pie. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., portlandtheatre.com. 7:30 pm Monday, Sept. 19. $25, $15 PATA members.
God of Carnage
[NEW REVIEW] “Children consume our lives, and then they destroy us,” says Alan (Michael Mendelson). As far as French playwright Yasmina Reza is concerned, this is a half-truth. The psychological (and occasionally physical) cage match that rocks the stage in her Tony-winning comedy has its roots in matrimony and the innate violence of humanity, but children provide the accelerant. Michael (Patrick Dizney) and Veronica (Allison Tigard) Novak, he a wholesaler of housewares and she a seller of art books writing a monograph on Darfur, have invited Alan and Annette (Trisha Miller) Raleigh, a pharmaceutical company lawyer and a wealth manager, to their Design Within Reach-outfitted living room (somewhere on Vista, from the view) to discuss the prior evening’s beating with a stick of the Novaks’ 10-year-old by the Raleighs’, which left the Novak child down two teeth. The children are not present. The evening would end quickly enough were Veronica not determined to force a teachable moment over coffee and clafoutis in a civilized manner. Civilization does not enter into child rearing, apparently—the ensuing hour of philosophy and fisticuffs turns husband against wife, men against women, hunters
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against farmers. Director Denis Arndt, who performed in Seattle Rep’s 2010 production of the show, has wisely chosen to interpret Carnage as a particularly disturbing farce. The show is outrageously funny, and its more sober moments are either too absurdist or too French (“What we like about women is sensuality, wildness, hormones,” Alan says, forgetting to mention je ne sais quoi) to be taken entirely seriously by an American audience. Instead we get a comedic brawl with no winners, performed by four terrific actors—Mendelson’s uncharacteristic show of bellicosity is especially welcome—that will leave you either shaking with laughter or just plain shaken. BEN WATERHOUSE. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm WednesdaysSaturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 9. $20-$42.
Love Song
John Steinkamp directs a Lunacy Stageworks production of John Kolvenbach’s comedy about a man who falls in love with the woman who burgles his apartment. Sellwood Masonic Lodge, 7126 SE Milwaukie Ave., www.lunacystageworks.org. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays; 2 pm Sunday, Oct. 2. $15, $12 students and seniors.
Maybe Baby, It’s You
[NEW REVIEW] To kick off its first full season in the company’s new digs—the Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza— Triangle Productions has chosen a mostly insipid script that would be more appropriate if offered as cruise ship entertainment than as an addition to Portland’s already full fall theater lineup. Maybe Baby, It’s You consists of 13 vignettes about the challenges of dating and marriage in heterosexual relationships. Some of them are laugh-out-loud funny, as when Medea of Greek tragedy goes on a blind date with the world’s nicest guy, or the characters of a film noir romance settle down and try to make marriage work. But most of the sketches consist of half-baked writing filled with stock characters. The one genuinely touching piece was “Once Upon a Time,” in which a divorced grandmother and grandfather tenderly rehash their past after meeting at their grandson’s soccer game. Despite the weaknesses of the material, Gary Cash and Adair Chappell’s high energy and good onstage chemistry keep the show moving. They’re fun to watch as they complete more costume and wig changes in 90 minutes than your average drag show. MARIANNA HANE WILES. Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 239-5919. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 2. $15-$35.
Mysterious Skin
New theater company Book of Dreams makes its debut with Prince Gomolvilas’ adaptation of Scott Heim’s novel about two sexually abused boys whose trauma manifests in very different ways: One believes he has been abducted by aliens; the other becomes a teen prostitute. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 971269-4032. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays through Sept. 24. $15.
Nuestros Cuentos
Folk tales, dances and songs from Africa, Mexico, Cuba and Brazil presented for children and families for Miracle Theatre’s La Luna Nueva fest. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 2367253. 2 pm Sunday, Sept. 18. $7-$14.
One Man, Two Guvnors
Third Rail Rep resumes its series of screenings of performances from the world’s great theaters with the National Theatre’s production of Richard Bean’s adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters. James Corden
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
plays a burned-out musician watching over a small-time thug (who turns out to be a thugette) in what The Guardian called “one of the funniest productions in the National’s history.” World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 235-1101. 2 and 7 pm Saturday, Sept. 17; 1 and 5 pm Sunday, Sept. 25. $15-$20.
Portland Playback Theater
Audience members tell stories, which are then brought to life on the spot by a team of improvisers. Portland Actors Conservatory, 1436 SW Montgomery St., www.playbacktheaterpdx.com. 7 pm Saturday, Sept. 17. $15-$17.
Shrek the Musical
It exists. It is on tour. Keller Auditorium, 222 SW Clay St., 800-7453000. 7:30 pm Wednesday-Friday, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturday, 1 and 6:30 pm Sunday, Sept. 13-18. $24.50-$
To Kill a Mockingbird
[NEW REVIEW] In Ted deChatelet’s unique take on the Harper Lee classic, an ensemble cast of seven men and women crosses genders and races to embody the citizens of Maycomb, Ala. It’s an ambitious choice, but solid acting, simple costume changes and vocal modulations created nearly 20 distinct characters (as a reviewer hailing from the South, this show featured the best Southern accents I’ve ever heard on a Northwest stage). Jocelyn Seid’s transformations were especially masterful—she portrayed widow Helen Robinson and prosecuting attorney Gilmer with equal zest, not to mention taking on the roles of Calpurnia and Miss Maudie as well. Of course, this type of ensemble staging runs into trouble at some points, and the choice has been made to employ African-American spirituals to cover the transitions between scenes. While the voices were strong, these songs often seemed jarringly out of place and overwrought. In order to integrate these tunes into the storytelling, fragments are often sung at important moments. Harper Lee’s words (which are well-preserved in this script) have such weight and import that the music seemed an unnecessary distraction. Still, if this production succeeds in its stated aim of creating dialogue around racism in Portland—and with grants provided to take the show to three area high schools, this seems likely—it will do us all some good. MARIANNA HANE WILES. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 922-0532. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Oct. 1. $24, $14 students.
COMEDY Long Story Short
The Brody crew teams up with Brainwaves Improvisational Comedy for a show that melds their long- and short-form methods. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 8 pm Saturday, Sept. 17. $8-$12.
The Play
Local improv group Peachy Chicken performs an improvised parody of an off-off Broadway production, from first rehearsal through opening night. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 8 pm FridaysSaturdays through Sept. 24. $15.
Saturday Stand-up Showcase
Late-night stand-up at Curious Comedy with Virginia Jones, Anthony Lopez and Ian Karmel. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 477-9477. 10 pm the first and third Saturdays of the month. $5.
Sweat
Sketch comedy from members of Road House: The Play and the 3rd Floor. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., sweatysweat.com. 8 pm FridaysSaturdays through Oct. 1. $15-$19.
The Weekly Recurring Humor Night
Phil Schallberger hosts character comedy from Stacy Hallal, Christian Ricketts, Gabe Dinger, Scott Rogers, Tynan DeLong, Whitney Streed, Jen Allen and Sean Connery. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9:30 pm Wednesdays. $3-$5. 21+.
CLASSICAL Cascadia Composers
The energetic regional composers collective’s fall fundraiser features a passel of piano music, played by dynamic keyboard whiz Maria Choban. The lineup also includes cellist Diane Chaplin, pianist Cary Lewis, clarinetist Barbara Heilmair, singer Nancy Wood, pianist Rhonda Ringering, plus many of the composers themselves—Eugene’s Paul Safar, Vancouver’s Liz Nedela, Jan Mittelstaedt, Jeff Winslow, Greg Steinke, David Bernstein and Gary Noland. Sherman Clay/Moe’s Pianos, 131 NW 13th Ave., 283-6152. 3 pm Saturday, Sept. 17. $5-$20.
Cascadia Concert Opera
The professional participants in this Eugene-based ensemble donate their time to bring opera to non-traditional venues and to audiences who might otherwise be unlikely to see it. With
only a handful of strong singers whose theatrical skills—particularly hilariously hammy tenor Nicholas Larson— matched their vocal prowess, a busy pianist, a few props (swords, mustaches, apron, various headgear) and of course some of the most achingly beautiful music ever written, this abridged, English language version of Mozart’s classic Shakespearean identity-switching comedy, Cosi Fan Tutti (All Women Are Like That), succeeded in entertaining an appreciative audience last month at the Old Church, and should do the same here. Sherman Clay/Moe’s Pianos, 131 NW 13th Ave., 775-2480. 2 pm Sunday, Sept. 18. Free.
Filmusik
This installment of the prolific series pairing new music with old movies enlists Jazz West Multiverse accompanying Josef von Sternberg’s gritty 1927 film noir Underworld. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 8774808. 8 pm Thursday, Sept. 15. $10.
REVIEW PAT R I C K W E I S H A M P E L
PERFORMANCE
DAN HOYLE
THE REAL AMERICANS (PORTLAND CENTER STAGE) Fed up with yuppie brunch and his life in the liberal bubble in general, San Francisco native Dan Hoyle decided he needed to explore the oft-lauded “real America” of the 2008 presidential campaigns. He bought a van and spent 100 days traveling rural highways through the Deep South, Appalachia and the Midwest in search of homegrown country wisdom. What he found was anger, ignorance and racism, as well as kindness, hospitality and hope. Hoyle, a journalist, playwright and performer, turned his experiences from the trip into an acclaimed, new one-man show, The Real Americans. Compared to the likes of Lily Tomlin and John Leguizamo in his talent for impersonation, Hoyle tells the stories of the people he met in their own words, voices and mannerisms, and creates composite characters to represent them—many of which would be offensive if they weren’t so hilariously dead-on. There’s the crippled racist in Alabama who reckons that terrorists don’t mess with the South because they must have seen Cops and know that “rednecks don’t go down easy,” and the evangelist grandfather in Texas who explains that giraffes are proof of creationism because they don’t get dizzy when they raise their heads. Hoyle mocks the “latte liberals” to equally hilarious effect. He imitates his friend Emily, exclaiming, “I’m so over all of it. I’m such a hipster bitch, I’m even over myself.” But whether ranting about how Obama is a Muslim, lamenting the lack of work to be found or praying for their grandchildren shipping out to Afghanistan, each of Hoyle’s characters come off as both real and surprisingly sympathetic. “I think the challenge we find ourselves in as a country, and what I try to show in the play, is that we shouldn’t view people as our enemies—they’re our brothers and sisters,” Hoyle says. “It’s really easy I think for people in the liberal bubbles to either write these people off completely or have a sort of rose-colored view of ‘Can’t we just get along?’ And I think neither one is correct. You have to acknowledge the differences.” PENELOPE BASS. Conversations over pie with yuppies and yokels.
SEE IT: 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays, alternating Saturday matinee and Sunday evening performances at the Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700, pcs.org. Closes Nov. 6. $26-$46.
PERFORMANCE OWEN CAREY
SEPT. 14-20
SEPT
14
KATIE KACVINSKY / Awaken (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Two young people struggle to stand up for themselves and create their own lives in this young adult novel. WED / 14TH / 7P
CEDAR HILLS
FRANCES MOORE LAPPE / EcoMind (Nation Books) A giant of the environmental movement, Frances Moore Lappe, confronts accepted wisdom. GOD OF CARNAGE
WED / 14TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
In this concert from “La Luna Nueva,” Miracle Theatre Group’s festival of Hispanic arts and culture, the Seattle trio performs traditional and original Latin American music on string and percussion instruments plus voices. Calderón opens with Latin American music for flute, guitar and percussion. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 pm Saturday, Sept. 17. $15-$17.
to your body and make you figure out how to pour them into your neighbor’s vessels, along with other high-falutin party games. He’s weird and wonderful and one of those great things that makes TBA less about watching and more about doing—making connections with both artists and festival attendees. KELLY CLARKE. The Works at Washington High School, 531 SE 14th Ave., 2247422. Interactive Projects 3-5 pm Tuesday-Thursday, Sept. 13-15. Free.
TOM FIELDS-MEYER / Following Ezra (NAL) Celebrates the rich life that emerges from a father's choice to embrace, love, and follow his autistic son.
Jessie Marquez
Northstar Dance Company
Gerardo Calderon, Correo Aereo
Accompanied by Portland jazz musicians, the Eugene chanteuse blends Cuban, Brazilian, jazz and pop in a concert that’s part of “La Luna Nueva.” Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 and 9:30 pm Friday, Sept. 16. $15-$17.
Mishra Brothers
In this opening concert in the Kalakendra presenting organization’s 25th season, the singers from Varanasi (Benares) join their sibling on sarangi (a bowed wooden string instrument), plus percussionist Subhen Chatterjee, to pay musical tribute to the mid-20th century singer Pandit Bhimsen Joshi with Hindustani music from Northern India. First Baptist Church, 909 SW 11th Ave., 702-6937. 8 pm Friday, Sept. 16. $15-$25.
Portland Gay Men’s Chorus, Portland Gay Symphonic Band, Portland Lesbian Choir, Confluence
The musical organizations perform all afternoon at the Gay Fair on the Square. Pioneer Courthouse Square, 701 SW 6th Ave. 12:30-5 pm Sunday, Sept. 18. Free.
Wildwood Consort
Once upon a time, French Baroque music was often considered frivolous, lightweight and otherwise inferior to Germanic and Italian varieties. Recent scholarship has revealed that the problem lies in the scores, not the sounds. As the great Baroque conductor violist Jordi Savall told me recently, French Baroque scores bear the same relationship to the music as the written French language bears to how it sounds—not much. This historically informed Portland performance ensemble contributes to the rediscovery of underrated French Baroque music with a program of music by early 18th century composer LouisNicolas Clérambault. St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 1432 SW 13th Ave., 939-6744. 2 pm Sunday, Sept. 18. $10.
DANCE Michel Groisman
[TBA] Michel Groisman wants to be your plaything. The Brazilian “action artist” unleashes epic games of shadow puppets, makes animals with his hands and straps lit candles to his arms as part of a contraption that makes him look like a half-naked Steampunk rig. He’ll attach glasses full of water
Northstar brings its program of Native American Dance—with elements of jazz, tap and hip-hop— to the Children’s Book Fair this weekend. North Portland Library, 512 N Killingsworth St., 988-5394. 11 am Saturday, Sept. 17. Free.
O.H.A.N.A. Foundation Hula Exhibition
Dancers from the Ka Lei Hali’a O Ka Lokelani hula school in Aloha perform traditional and modern hula at the O.H.A.N.A. Foundation’s E Ala E exhibition. Proceeds benefit the foundation’s scholarships. Southridge High School, 9625 Southwest 125th Ave., Beaverton. 2 pm Sunday, Sept. 18. $20-$25.
Rachid Ouramdane
[TBA] French choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, known for his conceptual approach to dance and his work with visual arts institutions including the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris, explores the connections among politics, history and identity in World Fair. Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 248-4335. 8:30 pm FridaySaturday, Sept. 16-17. $20-$25.
tEEth, Home Made
[TBA] Since its founding in 2006, Portland’s tEEth dance project has consistently been one of the most ambitious and interesting performance groups in the city— with various performances moving through bodily obsessions, unlikely contortions and movements, fabric tubes or vats of goo. But while previously discomfort and the shock of the new often seemed to be goals unto themselves, in Home Made artistic directors Angelle Hebert and Philip Kraft have used these same discomfiting tools in the service of a genuine, beautiful, emotionally fraught intimacy. The piece begins with the delicate, idyllic movements of two lovers beneath a thin sheet—as seen in shadowplay, or as voyeuristically projected onto a screen—and from this tranquility moves into more dangerous emotional territory: the violence and ecstasy and failures of any two people trying to connect. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. The Mouth, Inside Zoomtopia, 810 SE Belmont St., 224-7422. 8:30 pm Wednesday, Sept. 14. $20.
For more Performance listings, visit
THU / 15TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
upcoming in-store performances
KARL MARLANTES / What It Is Like to Go to War (Atlantic Monthly) Takes a deeply personal and candid look at the ordeal of combat. FRI / 16TH / 7P
CEDAR HILLS
DR. NEAL BARNARD / 21-Day Weight Loss Kickstarted (Grand Central) How in three short weeks to drop pounds, lower cholesterol and blood pressure, and improve blood sugar. FRI / 16TH / 7:30P
DOWNTOWN
JESSIE KNADLER & KELLY GEARY / Tart and Sweet (Rodale) The essential canning manual for the 21st century. SAT / 17TH / 2P
PASTAWORKS
BRIAN LIBBY / Tales from the Oregon Ducks Sideline (Skyhorse) Takes readers on a fun-filled trip through Oregon’s gridiron history.
record release event WHITE ORANGE • SUNDAY 9/18 @ 6PM
Psychedelic sludgy doomy stoner rockers White Orange are a synesthesia of sound and movement, an ideological translucent experience, jammy epic psychedelic trance rock. Sending melodic vocal signals, their laid back content chaos was meant to be played loudly. Their self-titled debut full-length album is full of hazy solos, waffling clean vocals and gauzy druggie guitar figures, like a sludgy Sabbath or Kyuss.
SUN / 18TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
KEN SCHOLES / Antiphon (Tor) The third novel in Scholes’s Psalms of Isaak series. MON / 19TH / 7P
CEDAR HILLS
VANESSA DIFFENBAUGH / The Language of Flowers (Ballantine) Creates a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman with a gift for flowers. MON / 19TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
BEN LOORY / Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin) RAE BRYANT / The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals (Patasola) Two short story writers discuss their new work. MON / 19TH / 7:30P HAWTHORNE
BLAKE CHARLTON / Spellbound The demon who cursed Nicodemus has hatched a conspiracy to destroy all human life. TUE / 20TH / 7P
record release event NURSES •
TUESDAY 9/20 @ 7PM
Nurses- Aaron Chapman, James Mitchell, John Bowers - are back with ‘Dracula,’ the follow-up to their 2009 homemade psych gem ‘Apple's Acre.’ ‘Dracula’ is steeped in the strange pop brew that bore ‘Apple's Acre,’ with the band's unmistakable elastic melodies, heady pop hooks and unconventional knack for catchy songwriting. It's bolder, heavier, with deep grooves, dubby basslines and a focus on rhythm.
CEDAR HILLS
JAY FELDMAN / Manufacturing Hysteria (Pantheon) Required reading for anyone who cares about democracy, freedom, and tolerance. TUE / 20TH / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
LYNNE COX / South with the Sun (Knopf)
Gives readers a full-scale account of the life of explorer Roald Amundsen. WED / 21ST / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
STEVEN J. ROSS / Hollywood Left and Right (Oxford Univ. Press) Recounts how Hollywood emerged during the 20th century as a vital center of American political life. THU / 22ND / 7:30P DOWNTOWN
record release event SOUTHERLy • WEDNESDAY 9/21 6PM
Youth is Southerly's 3rd full length album. This Portland dark-pop auteur takes on the very notion of earned perspective through age and experience.Youth embodies exactly everything that the best music can be: A confronting companion to our multitude of hopes and fears throughout all stages of life.
Visit POWELLS.COM/CALENDAR for further details and to sign up for our EVENTS NEWSLETTER. Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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SEPT. 14-20
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RICHARD SPEER. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit show information—including opening and closing dates, gallery address and phone number—at least two weeks in advance to: Visual Arts, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: rspeer@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115. Emailed press releases must be backed up by a faxed or printed copy.
NOW SHOWING Grace Weston
The miniature stage sets in Grace Weston’s Angles of Incidents offer wry commentaries on contemporary life. Although they initially come across as whimsical, there are darker undercurrents in many pieces. Happy Hour, which would seem a critique of alcoholism, shows an empty suit holding a cocktail; there is no person anymore, just a costume whose purpose is to hoist a drink. The Initiate shows a woman in front of a throne-like chair in the middle of the woods, perhaps about to be initiated into a cult. Then there is Dress Rehearsal, a depiction of a man looking at three sets of female legs in a strip club. The man is shown from the back, his identity subsumed in carnal obsession. Augen Gallery, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056, augengallery. com. Closes Oct. 1.
Kristen Miller
Impossibly elegant, simple but not simplistic, the works in Kristen Miller’s Memento transmute fabric, paper and beads into the stuff of aesthetic epiphany. Crepey and delicate, the pieces juxtapose beaded lines with pristine planes. Although most works are white, there are exceptions: Landscape, with its delicious mint green, and Shadow/Spring, which alternates green fabric with green beads. Miller is one of the gallery’s most talented artists, and this is her best show so far. PDX Contemporary Art, 925 NW Flanders St., 222-0063, pdxcontemporaryart. com. Closes Oct. 1.
Chris Watts
Chris Watts’ acrylic and ink paintings on birch panels display an immaculate marriage of grid and meandering lines. Although Watts has a penchant for tedious, over-literal titles, the works themselves are vivacious. In pieces such as Ten Horizontal Interlocking Constructions/Spirals and the Scrabble-board-like Six Horizontal Interlocking Forms, the artist shows that geometric rigor does not equate with rigor mortis. Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th Ave., 224-2634, blackfish. com. Closes Oct. 1.
The Shape of the Problem II: 30th Anniversary Exhibition
The most delightfully outrageous work in this 30th anniversary group show is Malia Jensen’s saucy, cheeky, and borderline creepy digital video installation, Salty. In the video, Jensen places a breast-shaped salt lick in the middle of a pasture. Warily, cows approach the white object, then take tentative licks, then crowd together, licking the nipple and gentle curves, as many as three cows at a time. There is something perverse and downright pornographic about this. The salt licks themselves are also displayed and offered for sale. You may buy one of them for $8,000. Elizabeth Leach Gallery, 417 NW 9th Ave., 224 0521, elizabethleach.com. Closes Oct. 1.
Connecting
The highlight of this group show, Connecting, is Eva Speer’s virtuosic Untitled (Black Sea). It depicts dark ocean waves in a near-photorealist style, the surface selectively eroded, betraying abstract swirls of bold-colored paint underneath. It is a jarringly beautiful effect: an abstract world lying underneath the “real” world. Speer is treading on metaphysical ground, making us question whether what we see and construe as fact might actually be only a thin membrane covering a much more complicated universe. Chambers @ 916, 915 NW Flanders St., 227 9398, chambersgallery.com. Closes Oct. 22.
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Monroe Hodder
Monroe Hodder slathers thick impasto on his canvases in luxuriant horizontal stripes. The teal and aqua tones in Songlines contrast with the sunflower yellows of Icarus Ascending and the red-and-white strawberry shortcake palette of After Dr. Pozzi, named after John Singer Sargent’s Dr. Pozzi at Home, which has a similar color scheme. Hodder’s works, while homogeneous, are sensual and satisfying. Butters Gallery, 520 NW Davis St., 2489378, buttersgallery.com. Closes Oct. 1.
Nike Graphic Studio Art Show
Twenty-eight graphic designers for Nike teamed up for this fundraiser benefiting the Japanese tsunami relief effort. The show’s most compelling works are Chris DeGaetano’s semi-abstract portraits of basketball stars Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. With their black, white, fuchsia and silver metallic palette, they spatter and drip spray paint and other media across the picture plane. Sports superstar portraiture does have its limits, however, and as with most graphic design presented under the rubric of fine art, these relentlessly sports-themed pieces become at a certain point a triumph of technique over subject matter. Compound Gallery, 107 NW 5th Ave., 796-2733, compoundgallery.com. Closes Sept. 30.
Pork Chop Express
You want to love a show with a title like Pork Chop Express, but this group exhibition is weighted toward lowbrow vignettes like Jeremy Nichols’ spraypainted Fish Chasing. The piece’s eponymous fish are pursued by cartoonish trolls that seem to have escaped from Epcot Center’s Norway Pavilion. More compelling are Aden Catalani’s horizontal abstractions, which juxtapose organic billows of mint green and marbled, earthy browns against linear geometric motifs. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900, backspace.bz. Closes Sept. 30.
Kelly Kievit
For the most part, Kelly Kievit’s oiland-marble-dust paintings meander around the canvas in dallying scrawls and scribbles. But when she goes for broke, both chromatically and compositionally—as in the aggressively pink Sustenance and Discourse and the orange-and-pink Spare—she scores big. Froelick Gallery, 714 NW Davis St., 2221142, froelickgallery.com. Closes Oct. 1.
Christopher Rauschenberg
Christopher Rauschenberg traveled to Inner Mongolia to photograph the frosty brick streets and desolate cityscapes in this gripping exhibition. The claustrophobic convergences of empty buildings and dirt lots inspire a sense of airlessness and dread. This town appears so cold and soul-crushing, it makes your bones hurt just to look at the pictures. Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210, blueskygallery.org. Closes Oct. 2.
Dana Popa
Dana Popa’s Not Natasha chronicles the lives of prostitutes in Moldova. This body of work strives for the kind of gritty vérité that photographer Mary Ellen Mark achieved in her Falkland Road series (shown at Blue Sky in March) about life in the brothels of Mumbai. But ultimately, Popa, unlike Mark, pulls her punches, turning coy when a more fearless photographer would not have flinched. Blue Sky Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 225-0210, blueskygallery.org. Closes Oct. 2.
Frank A. Rinehart
At the tail end of the era we have come to mythologize as the Old West, photographer Frank A. Rinehart captured the images of Native Americans in a series of studio portraits. The images
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
are all from 1898, 1899 and 1900, and hauntingly document the waning of American Indians’ way of life on the continent that once was theirs. Unfortunately, the generic studio backdrops and bland lighting Anglicize, homogenize and objectify the subjects into cardboard-cutout noble-savage stand-ins. These photographs occupy a sad intersection between photojournalism, portraiture, history and tragedy. Charles A. Hartman Fine Art, 134 NW 8th Ave., 287-3886, hartmanfineart.net. Closes Oct. 1.
REVIEW WAY N E B U N D
VISUAL ARTS
Assemblage
For Assemblage, curator Leo Michelson has gathered together pieces by 21 artists, all of whom work in assemblage. Michelson’s interest in the medium dates to the 1960s, when he was fascinated by the assemblages of the late Joseph Cornell. The current exhibition showcases a wide variety of approaches to assemblage by artists from across the Pacific Northwest. Annie Meyer Artwork Gallery, 120 NW 9th Ave., Suite 102, 224-3150, anniemeyerartwork.com. Closes Sept. 30.
Carrie Iverson
Carrie Iverson’s Correspondence unflinchingly explores the memory loss experienced by the artist’s father. When you walk into the sepulchral, windowless exhibition gallery, you enter a world of gray: mixed-media works in a grayscale palette that wash over you like a bank of fog. Here, all that was once distinct has blurred; all that was congealed has dispersed, like a web of neurons that has frayed and torn. The artist has taken objects associated with her father and transmogrified them into elegies in paper, kiln-formed glass and chalkboards on which all writing has been obscured into messy indecipherability. A milky glass plank called Redacted (which would have been a chilling title for the exhibition itself) evokes diary pages that have faded or been erased. Iverson conjures an atmosphere of sfumato and stone-washed memories, in which all concretes have eroded into ghostly traces of their erstwhile referents. This is a technically assured and courageous inquiry into the disappearance and endurance of memory. Bullseye Gallery, 300 NW 13th Ave., 227-0222, bullseyegallery.com. Closes Nov. 19.
Stephen Scott Smith
The memories in Stephen Scott Smith’s Burlap 2B are those of a Gen-X’er now in his late 30s, slipping nostalgically and perhaps uneasily into middle age. Curated by Smith’s longtime gallerist, Mark Woolley, the show is a literal and epistemological deconstruction of Burlap, the artist’s November 2010 exhibition at the Breeze Blocks Gallery. In the previous show, Smith installed an enormous beech tree in the gallery’s center, alluding to the uprooting and artificial preservation of our collective and individual pasts. This time there are rectangular chunks of wood in the spot where the tree stood, as if the raw materials of memory have been ruthlessly disassembled. On the gallery’s walls, Smith’s large-scale drawings recall classic ’80s motifs with droll wit, including an image of Ronald Reagan wearing a Star Wars pin, an allusion not only to the famous film series but also to the Strategic Defense Initiative (nicknamed “Star Wars”) championed by the late president. The back-gallery installation, “These Dreams,” feels—but does not precisely look—like an archetypal ’80s teenager’s bedroom, filled with vinyl LPs and more of those mysterious wooden blocks. The installation, like the show itself, is an eerie simulacrum of a past that is as much a construction zone as it is a construct. Breeze Block Gallery, 323 NW 6th Ave., breezeblockgallery.com. Closes Oct. 1.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
CLAIRE FONTAINE’S USA (BURNT/UNBURNT)
VISUAL ARTS HIGHLIGHTS FROM TBA Imagine you’re an office clerk hunting for a specific manila folder. You open the filing cabinet and pull the drawer out, but to your stupefaction, the drawer just keeps coming out, out, out, three feet, four feet, five—the damn thing won’t stop. It’s a funhouse grotesquerie, the office-job equivalent of those teeny cars at the circus that clowns pile out of by the dozens. This administrative assistant’s nightmare is conjured up in Anna Gray and Ryan Wilson Paulsen’s installation, Don’t Worry We’ll Fix It, and it numbers among the highlights of this year’s installment of the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival. The visual arts component of TBA is curated by Kristan Kennedy and displayed on multiple floors of the old Washington High School building. Gray and Paulsen’s installation offers a Kafkaesque take on bureaucracy gone mad. In addition to the never-ending file cabinet, there is a stack of gigantically oversized index cards, a chalkboard with nothing written on it, a gold-painted shredder and fax machine, and an immaculate row of burned books, still reeking of smoky ash. Witty, well-executed and just inscrutable enough to titillate, it makes for a compelling exposé of the ludicrousness of corporate culture. Another intriguing installation is Claire Fontaine’s USA (Burnt/ Unburnt), a wall-spanning map of the contiguous United States, Alaska, and Hawaii, composed entirely of green-tipped matchsticks. Striking for both its intimidating scale and droll humor, it’s one of the most memorable works at TBA this year. But for sheer “What the hell?” audacity, turn to Kate Gilmore’s Sudden as a Massacre. A digital video shows four women in identical sundresses grabbing handfuls of clay from a mound and hurling them with vicious abandon onto a stage and at a yellow wall. The results of this messy endeavor are all around you as you watch the video unfurl: dried chunks of clay everywhere, littering the floors, staining the walls. Why were these women compelled to do this? What does their tirade symbolize? What is the source of their ferocious energy? Freud would have had a field day with these ravenous, angry women, who so methodically destroy the clay monolith, tearing it down like a coven of crazed witches. Gilmore’s piece, like Gray and Paulsen’s and Fontaine’s, demonstrates the marriage of unique premise, unconventional media and dedicated execution that is the hallmark of TBA at its best. RICHARD SPEER.
Three installations embody the spirit of TBA at its best.
SEE IT: Washington High School, Southeast 14th Avenue and Stark Street, pica.org. Closes Oct. 30. Free.
BOOKS
SEPT. 14-20
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RUTH BROWN. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, submit lecture or reading information at least two weeks in advance to: WORDS, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: words@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 14 Casanova: Avaritia Book Release and Art Exhibit
Eisner Award-winning comic writer Matt Fraction releases the long-awaited third volume in his Casanova series, Casanova: Avaritia. Fraction will sign copies at Floating World, which has just moved into some shiny new digs also worth checking out. Floating World Comics, 20 NW 5th Ave., Suite 101, 241-0227. 6 pm. Free. All ages.
Frances Moore Lappe
You may remember Oregon-born writer and environmentalist Frances Moore Lappe from such books as Diet For a Small Planet. Her latest, EcoMind, promises to expose our “thought traps” about the environmental challenges of the 21st century. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
Buffy Season Nine
Buffy the TV show may have ended in 2003, but the Buffyverse lives on in a more two-dimensional form in Dark Horse’s comic book series of the same name. So far, Dawn is dating Xander, Buffy had a lesbian fling and Giles is dead. And that was just season eight. To celebrate the launch of season nine, Things From Another World is holding a signing and “no-holds-barred” Q&A with
editor Scott Allie and artist Georges Jeanty. There also will be free beer and food, and each purchase of Buffy 9#1 comes with a “Buffy swag bag.” Things From Another World, 4133 NE Sandy Blvd., 284-4693. 7 pm. Free. All ages.
THURSDAY, SEPT. 15 Comma Reading Series
Broadway Books is starting a new monthly reading series, Comma, which will be held on the third Thursday of every month, featuring two authors from different genres. Speaking in September is nonfiction writer Kristy Athens, author of the forthcoming Get Your Pitchfork On: The Real Dirt on Country Living, and Oregonian poetry reviewer B.T. Shaw. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726. 7 pm. Free.
Literary Mixtape No. 5
It’s exactly like a mixtape, but in person and with book readings instead of music, and you can’t give it to a girl to tell her you like her. In reading series Literary Mixtape, writers share their favorite works of literature by other writers while you drink cocktails. This edition’s headliner is Paul Collins (author of The Murder of the Century and “literary detective” on NPR’s Weekend Edition) along with Portland Mercury journalist Sarah Mirk and Lewis & Clark English professor and
novelist Pauls Toutonghi. Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600. 7 pm. Free. 21+.
SATURDAY, SEPT. 17 The Sledgehammer 36-Hour Writing Contest
A mashup of fiction writing and scavenger hunting, the Sledgehammer 36-Hour Writing Competition gives aspiring scribes of all ages a day-and-a-half to scour the city for writing prompts, then use them to construct a literary masterpiece against the clock. Winners will be invited to read at this year’s Wordstock Festival and other literary events throughout the year. Register at sledgehammercontest.com. Adults $25-$100 depending on team size, youth $15-$60.
written by Lisa Montierth illustrated by Ashley Burke published by Craigmore Creations
Join us for the launch party! • Meet and greet with the creators • Join the free raffle for great prizes • Make your own free button Sunday, September 25th 2:00 pm Powell's Books Cedar Hills Crossing 3415 Southwest Cedar Hills Boulevard Beaverton, OR RSVP online and receive a signed print! www.RIGHTWHEREYOUARENOW.com
MONDAY, SEPT. 19 Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s debut novel, The Language of Flowers, tells the story of a young woman who uses the Victorian era “language of flowers”—also known as floriography (use it in a sentence today!)— to communicate emotions. Did you know that lime blossoms represent fornication? And dandelions represent flirting. Those saucy dandelions, I knew they were up to something. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
PAGE 58
SHANNON WHEELER TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN OMNIBUS Like other iconic black-and-white comics char- with TMCM jumping in as the rather befuddling acters with cult followings—Cerebus, Concrete, comic relief. Even Wheeler himself—depicted as Zippy the Pin-head—Too Much Coffee Man is a Frankensteinish gentle giant—makes increasinstantly identifiable but incredibly hard to ingly frequent appearances as a distraught define. In fact, Portland cartoonist Shannon creator who longs only to finish issues of TMCM Wheeler’s creation has a special disadvantage so he can “read a book, a real book” or “go on a when it comes to being understood or taken date...enjoy my life.” All of this is fascinating: We seriously: The mug-headed, see a young cartoonist develeternally anxious title charoping at light speed, tackling acter is so iconic he’s more oversized existential problems widely known for his merch and deconstructing conven(coffee cups, especially) and tional comics plots all at the advertisements ( you may same time. remember him from a grungeI’m not sure the one-page era Converse TV spot) than for comics that make up the his actual comics. majority of Wheeler’s book— In the new Too Much Coffee syndicated in alt weeklies like Man Omnibus (Dark Horse, this one—were any easier to 536 pages, $24.99), which put together than his longrepackages five previously form work. If anything, the published books with multiple quality of his draftsmanship essays (Henry Rollins, the realand the creativity of his panels life Too Much Coffee Man, increases (the book’s misleadtackles the main introduction) ingly titled “Amusing MusA caffeinated portrait of the and very little helpful context, ings” section features several cartoonist as a young man. Wheeler acknowledges this unconventional strips remivery problem. “People tell me they love my comic niscent of Art Spiegelman’s Breakdowns). But by because they love coffee,” he writes. “I wish that the end of the omnibus the reader feels a jarring they’d tell me that they love my comic because disconnect between the free-form character it’s clever or well drawn, or insightful.” development of the book’s first half and the ediToo Much Coffee Man is indeed all of these torial cartooning of the second. We see glimpses things, and quite often it’s all of these things at of the Coffee Man we first met—like everyone once. This is especially true of the omnibus’ first else, the political fallout from 9/11 more or less 200 pages or so, which collect Wheeler’s early, drives him insane—but we just wish we could long-form Too Much Coffee Man stories. Here we spend a little more time with him. Maybe that’s see the cup-headed one as more of a ringmaster why people always tell Wheeler they love coffee. than a central character, and it’s a thrill to watch CASEY JARMAN. Wheeler juggle multiple unrelated plots (sometimes funny, sometimes desperate) around him, READ IT: Too Much Coffee Man Omnibus is in stores now.
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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SEPT. 14-20 REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
RICHARD FOREMAN
MOVIES
Editor: AARON MESH. TO BE CONSIDERED FOR LISTINGS, send screening information at least two weeks in advance to Screen, WW, 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210. Email: amesh@wweek.com. Fax: 243-1115.
Apollo 18
If you believe they put a man on the moon, maybe you’ll believe there’s something out there that’s not cool. Anyway, here’s a horror movie about it. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Bridgeport, Lloyd Mall, Sandy.
Attack the Block
87 For the second time this year—fol-
lowing Super 8—we’re sided with a rag-tag group of adolescent weirdos dealing with space invaders. It’s about as generic as a movie can sound. But within three whip-smart minutes of Attack the Block, it’s obvious freshman director Joe Cornish has crafted a nasty, hysterically funny homage that mines everything from 1950s sci-fi schlock to vintage John Carpenter to craft one of the smartest, funniest and most kinetic films of the season. The film opens with our heroes—multicult London gangbangers who talk like Ali G and recall The Goonies by way of Boyz n the Hood—mugging a pretty young nurse (Jodie Whittaker), only to be interrupted by an alien life form plunging to Earth and into a nearby car. The kids’ leader, charismatic 15-year-old Moses (John Boyega, in a star-making turn), promptly slays the beast and takes it to the nearest secure place, a weed den lorded over by a violent hip-hop wannabe (Jumayn Hunter) and run by fanny-pack-sporting Ron (Shaun of the Dead’s Nick Frost). This is genre drivel simmered to perfection by a director who makes the familiar seem alien. The joy of watching the picture lies in Cornish’s skill at instilling it with the same freshness Wright’s Shaun of the Dead gave to the rigor-mortis world of zombies. Attack the Block seethes cool while reminding us why we like this type of film in the first place: It makes us feel like kids again, facing the unknown with a smirk—and a katana blade, for good measure. R. AP KRYZA. Lloyd Center.
Bellflower
70 Evan Glodell, the writer, direc-
tor and star of Bellflower, has said his debut movie was inspired by a bad breakup, which is about as revelatory a disclosure as Martin Scorsese admitting that Mean Streets was influenced by Catholicism. The film was shot with a custom-built digital camera, but I’m pretty sure it’s made out of hate sex. It is exactly like All the Real Girls if David Gordon Green had grown up worshipping Ozploitation flicks instead of Terrence Malick, and if he couldn’t help finishing every emotional confrontation by pulling out a flamethrower. I mean, this is a movie in which the romantically devastated hero considers a litany of different responses, playing each option out in his head— and not one of them fails to include a flamethrower. This synopsis makes Bellflower sound funny, which it is not. It is silly, but it is not funny. In fact, it is often very upsetting, in the way that the thought of going mad is upsetting. I have rarely seen a movie not made by Scorsese that so precisely captures the place where male insecurity and impotence become male violence. It is a film about truly impure thoughts, and it calls to mind the famous priestly question, “Did you entertain them?” Bellflower compulsively strokes those thoughts into an elaborate phantasmagoria. Bellflower is the work of a director bravely admitting he doesn’t understand how to relate to women. It would be a better movie if he understood women. R. AARON MESH. Clinton Street Theater. Friday-Thursday, Sept. 16-22. NEW
Blank City
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, TBA] A documentary on New York City’s East Village in the 1970s. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 and 9 pm Friday and Saturday, and 7 pm Sunday, Sept. 16-18.
Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star
Nick Swardson dreams of porno fame. Not screened for critics. R. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Pioneer Place, Bridgeport, Lloyd Mall. NEW
Burial Ground: Nights of Terror
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] A 1981 Italian zombie film, with lots of disembowelment. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, Sept. 20.
Captain America: The First Avenger
70 Patriot, super-soldier and the most violent Ultimate Frisbee player in history, Captain America finally gets the proper big-screen treatment after nearly 70 years with a fun piece of mindless escapism full of explosions and Nazi killin’. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Mt. Hood, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Tigard.
Colombiana
68 A movie from the Luc Besson
factory with an elaborate vision of an American underworld that has never existed—the kind of atmosphere in which a man can stand next to an elementary school in Chicago, fire random gunshots to wreck a passing car in broad daylight, then take a moment to explain this as an object lesson to his niece, while never expressing the slightest concern that some eyewitness might identify him. It is a movie where a woman in a bikini writhes atop a glass tank of sharks—and later those sharks are shoehorned into a hit that has nothing whatsoever to do with the larger plot. It is, in short, operatically ridiculous and incorrigibly amoral, with several enjoyable, incoherent action sequences and Saldana crawling through tight spaces while not wearing a bra. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest, Lloyd Mall, Tigard, Sandy. NEW
Connected
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A documentary on human links in a technological age. PG. Clinton Street Theater. 7 pm Thursday, Sept. 15.
Contagion
64 Examining what would happen if the grim prophecies of a global swine flulike epidemic had come true, Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion takes great pains to show the excruciatingly complicated and frustrating lengths the global scientific community would go to in an effort to vaccinate a crumbling world. It’s a fascinating concept, and in the hands of such a meticulous director as Soderbergh, whose gift for juggling dozens of characters and plotlines can explode off the screen, Contagion could have been among the best medical freakouts in ages. That diagnosis, sadly, is far from accurate. Soderbergh trains his lens on a global group of scientists/A-listers (among them Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law and Elliott Gould) who work endlessly in labs as the disease escalates, leaving a pile of dead Oscar winners and lab monkeys in its path (because you can’t make an outbreak flick without at least a few monkeys, apparently). Trouble is, Soderbergh is so concerned with offering a slick portrait of jargony scientific methodology and bureaucratic squabbling that he all but forgets the human element, even as citizens the world over succumb to scavenging and paranoia. Matt Damon adds some muchneeded human heft as the widower of Gwyneth Paltrow’s patient zero, and Winslet is reliably good as a committed Centers for Disease Control worker. But scratch Soderbergh’s name off the credits and sub in actors like Powers Boothe, Corbin Bernsen, Anne Heche and Bronson Pinchot, and Contagion would simply be a standard-issue TV movie of the week. PG-13. AP
CONT. on page 54
I SWEAR I CAN SEE YOUR SOUL: Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan.
SOLITARY BAGMAN RYAN GOSLING WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE IN DRIVE. YEP, ANYTHING. EVEN THAT. BY AA R ON MESH
amesh@wweek.com
There is no safer feeling than driving alone at night. You have the illusion of control, the freedom of speed, and the assurance (not even half true) that if you make a mistake, only you will have to pay the violent fine. Drive, the luxurious new L.A. noir from Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn, is the most brutally antisocial movie of the year. It is also the most romantic—but it is primarily spellbound by the romance of isolation. It is about being very good at a solitary pursuit, and valuing another person enough to allow her a glimpse of what you do, only to realize that letting her in exposes her to terrible danger. Writing this out, I realize it sounds like a lot of macho, self-pitying poppycock. And for a movie
second half makes a sick kind of sense: It is a movie about men who only know how to show loyalty and care by staving in the skulls of other men. Winding Refn’s last film, Valhalla Rising, featured vikings disemboweling each other by hand, and the characters here are not much more civilized, though they do have more cosmopolitan surroundings, smearing each other across some handsomely paneled elevator interiors. It is some kind of advancement, I suppose, that while the characters speak after very long pauses, they have moved past grunts. When boy meets boy in Drive, homicide is inevitable. But first boy meets girl. The boy is Ryan Gosling, a stunt-car driver with illegal sidelines and a stockpile of toothpicks. The girl is Carey Mulligan, a waitress with a young son (Kaden Leos) and a husband (Oscar Isaac) about to get out of jail. Their courtship is as much an act of protection as desire. Both actors do astounding work with silent glances; it would not be fair to call their performances subtle, but they are perfectly pitched
DRIVE IS THE MOST BRUTALLY ANTISOCIAL MOVIE OF THE YEAR. IT IS ALSO THE MOST ROMANTIC. about standing—or, rather, sitting—alone, Drive has attracted a torrent of intoxicated hosannas at each festival screening. But I confess I also fell for it, hard. It engrossed and moved me like no other picture I’ve seen this year. And I have a sliver of justification: The entire history of noir, stretching back to The Maltese Falcon through Drive’s obvious influences like Walter Hill’s The Driver and Michael Mann’s Thief, is a lot of macho, self-pitying poppycock. That does not diminish the power of those movies. If Drive, a deliberate throwback, belongs in their company, it is because it is unreservedly committed to the decadent masochism of its fantasy. It is also exhilarating filmmaking, from soup to swollen nuts. Drive conclusively establishes Winding Refn as a director whose every work must be seen. It contains half a dozen white-knuckle action sequences—starting with a robbery getaway timed to the final buzzer of an L.A. Clippers game— yet its closest relative is the lightheaded, restrained eroticism of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love. In this context, the relentless carnage of Drive’s
to a movie where everything but their love—and mutual devotion to her child—is disposable. The collateral damage includes Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks and Ron Perlman—great faces deployed in delightful ways. At the edges of the film lurks Albert Brooks: His chummy but remorseless mobster is a variation on all his comedic characters who used menschiness to hide a petty soul. I can’t escape the nagging feeling that Drive does the same thing, that its ravishing look and lonesome honor are a ruse to to justify an inner vacuum of human decency. It raises the question, finally, of whether a great movie has to be a moral movie. Is it enough that it is true to its own code? What if that code is ultimately tribal and barbaric? Drive took me where I wanted to go, and it is frightening how euphoric I felt speeding into darkness. 95 SEE IT: Drive is rated R. It opens Friday at Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Division, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy and St. Johns Twin.
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page 59
ALSO AVAILABLE ON DEMAND
I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, CineMagic, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Movies on TV, Sherwood, Roseway, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy, St. Johns Twin Cinema-Pub.
Cowboys & Aliens
66 Movies make it so easy sometimes: “You have to stop thinking,” Olivia Wilde tells Daniel Craig toward the climax of Cowboys & Aliens, and that’s clearly the track director Jon Favreau took in naming this sci-fi/Western mashup. A horde of anonymous extraterrestrials comes to the American Southwest in the late 1800s to plunder its resources and, just for the hell of it, abduct and probe the citizens of a tiny frontier town. Cue the hasty assemblage of a ragtag rescue party—the gruff cattle magnate (Harrison Ford), the whiskey-swilling priest (Clancy Brown), the wimpy barkeep (Sam Rockwell), the mysterious woman (Wilde), the steely-eyed outsider (Craig) and, why the heck not, a kid (Noah Ringer) and a dog—that sets off to find their fellow townspeople and bring them home. The lesson here is that simply pulling tired tropes from two different kinds of movies doesn’t instantly make something fresh. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Clackamas, Eastport, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Crazy, Stupid, Love
70 Where Friends With Benefits
employed Justin Timberlake as an art director at GQ, this picture features Ryan Gosling as a walking issue of Esquire—the one with the “Am I a Man?” quiz on page 170. You can practically smell his cologne ads. His performance is the Situation with a better wardrobe and a bigger vocabulary, and his situation is that he’s being a show pony: the real actor who returns to light entertainment again in an unlikely role. Still, he’s fun (my single favorite shot in Crazy, Stupid, Love is Jacob doing the crossword on the back of a cereal box during the requisite “everybody’s thinking” montage), and he has great chemistry with eventual bravadomelting love interest Emma Stone, just as Steve Carell develops an easy rhythm with Julianne Moore. PG-13. AARON MESH. Clackamas, Bridgeport, Fox Tower, Lloyd Mall. NEW
Dial M for Murder in 3D
[ONE WEEK ONLY, REVIVAL] Press * to have Alfred Hitchcock POKE YOU IN THE EYE. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Sept. 16-22.
The Debt
60 John Madden’s The Debt feels
like a talented but glib college student trying to pass a modern European history exam with an essay on the repercussions of the Holocaust and the founding of Israel—it volunteers answers, but has no feeling for the questions it raises. The film’s confusion is not
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merely thematic; it also bungles at the most basic levels. Remaking an Israeli film, Ha-Hov, Madden positions Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson and Ciarán Hinds as aging former Mossad agents, then rewinds to their fateful 1966 mission in East Berlin—but he casts two young men (Sam Worthington and Marton Csokas) who could each be young versions of either Wilkinson or Hinds. Jessica Chastain, however, is unmistakable: She was the ethereal mother in The Tree of Life and the kind soul in The Help, and now, as mini-Mirren, plays a woman whose first instinct is to try and make the best of bad situations. This disposition is not all that helpful when you’re locked in an apartment with three men, two of them rivals for your romantic attentions and the other a Nazi doctor. These scenes are undeniably claustrophobic, and the movie gains some power from physical intimacy—Chastain captures the vile doc (a nasty Jesper Christensen) by going undercover for gynecological exams, and later gives him a very close shave. But as the Mossad fighters grow increasingly rattled, the picture begins to abandon moral inquiry in favor of plot contrivances. By its final act, The Debt bears an unfortunate resemblance to another Mirren vehicle, the AARP assassin flick Red. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, City Center, Fox Tower, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
70 Guillermo del Toro hates chil-
dren. Whether he’s directing The Devil’s Backbone or Pan’s Labyrinth—which used the Spanish Civil War as backdrop for horror wrought on the young—or producing the dead-baby creepfest The Orphanage, del Toro is particularly sadistic when it comes to kids. That’s his strong suit. Framing ghost stories through the eyes of children creates a special kind of dread, with the audience forced to recall early fears as innocents fall prey to evil. A collaboration with rookie director Troy Nixey, the remake of 1973’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark features del Toro’s typically unsettling gothic aesthetic in the story of a young girl (Bailee Madison) sent to live with her estranged dad (Guy Pearce) and his girlfriend (Katie Holmes) as they renovate an impossibly spooky Rhode Island mansion, only to be stalked by tiny, ratlike monsters with a hunger for children’s teeth. Unlike other summer fare, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is all slow-burn creep-outs rather than splatter scares, with ghostly voices whispering through dusty vents, raising tension to a boil as the creatures slowly reveal themselves. It succeeds resoundingly in making us squirm like children spinning yarns around a campfire. R. AP KRYZA. Eastport, Cornelius.
Fright Night
76 Craig Gillespie’s new remake
of the 1985 horror-comedy Fright Night—the short, bloody story of
SEPT. 14-20
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
In adapting his own comic book about the life of French pop maestro Serge Gainsbourg, director Joann Sfar concentrates on one central image—a walking, talking anti-Semitic caricature. It’s a larger-than-life-size puppet that young Lucien Ginsberg summons in his Nazi-occupied childhood as a kind of golem sophisticate. The Gainsbourg alter ego looks like one of Julie Taymor’s more outlandish creations, a cross between Count von Count and The Nutcracker’s Rat King, with incandescent yellow eyes and a cigarette constantly burning under a hooked nose. This brash reclaiming of Jewish identity through Jewish libel is a bold gesture—but it’s also a stagy one, and it keeps throwing the brakes on the larger biopic. Here is the metaphor of how Ginsberg became Gainsbourg, intruding on any attempt by lead actor Eric Elmosnino to become Gainsbourg. The film briefly gets revving in its re-creation of go-go ’60s Paris, as our hero beds Brigitte Bardot (Laetitia Casta) and marries Jane Birkin (Lucy Gordon, whose suicide casts a pall over the vibrancy of her scenes here). With the former he recorded “Bonnie and Clyde”; with the latter he sang “Je T’Aime...Mon Noi Plus.” Nothing matching the pure pleasure of those two tracks is in this movie. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
The Guard
42 Brendan Gleeson has impossible
features. He appears to have been born in the wrong aspect ratio, with a visage formatted to fit old televisions, a noggin incompatible with our wide screens. His face, or so it seems, must be stretched and pummeled like pink taffy to conform to the 16:9 standard, and it’s almost sadistically compelling to watch Gleeson work with his own strange packaging. Writer-director John Michael McDonagh (whose brother Martin used Gleeson in In Bruges, a film John should have studied more carefully) is lucky to have him in The Guard, for absent the big man’s wadded physicality, there would be little worth looking at here. Gleeson stars as an adorably racist police officer who reluctantly teams with a strait-laced FBI agent (Don Cheadle, very nearly comatose) to foil a trio of drug traffickers who discuss Nietzsche when they’re not killing people, because like much of the rest of The Guard, these bad guys seem to have escaped through a hole in the bottom of Tarantino’s barrel. At least the demon who writes the next Lethal Weapon movie (it’s bound to happen) can cross “Murtaugh and Riggs goes to Ireland” off his list of bright ideas. R. CHRIS STAMM. Fox Tower.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
80 The first act of Deathly Hallows
2 is a roller-coaster ride through goblin caves, and everything else is dedicated to an all-out battle that, with its rubble and dusty light, looks like Saving Private Potter.
This World War II tone is the finest thing about the film: Director David Yates and his set-design team have created an atmosphere that explicitly recalls London during the Blitz, with young lovers snogging goodbye as the cathedral towers rain down. It is a good stage for good deaths, and everybody shows a lot of grace under pressure, especially Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis), who gets the most noble bits. PG-13. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Lloyd Center.
The Help
86 Give a white male director a
script about Southern racism and nine times out of 10 he’ll hand you back the story of an enlightened sports team wrapped in a flashy soundtrack. Director Tate Taylor manages to break this mold in his adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s
2009 novel, The Help. Set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Miss., the film focuses on young, wealthy white mothers and their maltreatment of the black maids who serve them. Emma Stone plays Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, an aspiring writer whose childhood friends have grown up to resemble rabidly racist hybrids of the Plastics and the Stepford Wives. The Help doesn’t reward its viewers with a championship trophy. Instead, the film presents the reality of Southern life in the 1960s as something that takes much more than a highschool squad to overcome. PG-13. SHAE HEALEY. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Moreland, Pioneer Place, Cinema 99, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
CONT. on page 56
REVIEW SONY PICTURES CLASSICS
Charley Brewster (Anton Yelchin) and Jerry, the vampire who moves in next door to his Vegas suburb tract house and promptly ruins his life—really doesn’t try all that hard. And that makes it a gory good time, packed with as many giggles as wooden stakes and exploding bodies. Much of the credit for this guilty pleasure goes to Colin Farrell, who plays Jerry (“That is a terrible vampire name,” Charley says incredulously, early in the film) as a hunky romance-novel cad who quickly devolves into a menacing addict with personal-space issues. You’d be attracted to him if he didn’t seem so, well…rapey. Farrell, sporting an inky black widow’s peak and white wife-beater, has concocted an entire arsenal of tweaker twitches and undead affectations. At heart, it’s still the same creepy, campy flick: all fangs and one-liners. R. KELLY CLARKE. Living Room Theaters.
MOVIES
WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM WWEEKDOTCOM JOHANNESBURG BLUES: Khomotso Manyaka goes to town.
LIFE, ABOVE ALL Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka) hasn’t been to school much lately. She has to bury her baby sister, and take her drunken stepfather’s bicycle to pay for the coffin. Her father is dead, her mother (Lerato Mvelase) can barely get out of bed, and absolutely nobody has AIDS. They suffer from pneumonia, or rheumatism, or demonic possession. In Chanda’s village, 200 kilometers northeast of Johannesburg, saying your son was killed in a robbery is preferable to admitting the truth. Those wondering why AIDS remains intractable in South Africa need look no further than Life, Above All, which is based on a young-adult novel by Canadian playwright Allan Stratton. The hospitals are well-stocked—although Chanda has to get in line to get an ambulance—but patients prefer to see quacks who will tell them what they want to hear and sell them multilevel-marketed potions. It’s not just shame that keeps the victims and their families from seeking medical care; it’s the fear of being driven from their home. That’s what happened to Chanda’s friend Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane), who, having lost both parents to AIDS, has been cast out by her relatives. She lives in something less than a hovel, and at 13 is working as a truck-stop hooker. And that’s what’s happening now to Chanda’s mother, who has been ordered by a witch doctor to return to her childhood home to break the curse that is weakening her, leaving Chanda to take care of her two younger stepsiblings and deal with the busybody next door (Harriet Manamela). South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz (Mapantsula) keeps the action at a 12-year-old’s eye level, as Chanda observes the follies of adults and tries to change their ways. But superstition and misogyny make a lethal brew; it will take more than money to solve this crisis, or one strong-willed little girl. While Life, Above All offers no easy answers, it puts forth a frank assessment of the cultural obstacles to fighting AIDS in the country with the highest rate of infection in the world. PG-13. ANN LEWINSON.
What we talk about when we don’t talk about AIDS.
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SEE IT: Life, Above All opens Friday at Fox Tower.
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acidity that gives him a lot of his comic appeal. What’s left is niceness, which isn’t really a quality or a flaw. It just is, man. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Mall, Wilsonville, Sandy.
GOLDEN SCREEN CINEMAS
P. 6
SEPT. 14-20
Point Blank
85 This season’s gritty French
SHAOLIN NEW
I Don’t Know How She Does It
12 I bolted from the theater as
soon as I had the chance, so I didn’t stick around long enough to see if I Don’t Know How She Does It’s final credit was “#firstworldproblems.” If it wasn’t there, it should be. In yet another comedy about the struggles of an upper-middle-class white woman, Sarah Jessica Parker plays Kate Reddy, a financial something-or-other whose high-powered job forces her to neglect her kids, her husband and her best friend. Appropriately, the movie itself also neglects everyone except for Kate. All other characters—including a bored-looking Greg Kinnear and uselessly radiant Christina Hendricks— are props in her isolated worldview, in which the greatest tragedy of her busy life is missing her son’s first haircut. Quoth Minor Threat: Boofucking-hoo. There’s also a prolife (or, at least, pro-procreation) subplot involving Olivia Munn as Kate’s aggressively single coworker, who suffers a birth control malfunction 15 minutes after declaring she doesn’t want children then inexplicably decides to keep the baby. That made me want to yell out, “Just get a fucking abortion!” like I do while watching 16 and Pregnant, but it’d be insulting to place that show in the same league as this piece of garbage. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Tigard.
The Last Circus
71 Like the best big-top sideshows,
Alex de la Iglesia’s The Last Circus is utterly shameless and untoward, intent only on delivering cheap thrills and naughty glimpses of gross behavior. It begins with a machetewielding clown mowing down Fascist troops and ends with two mutilated clowns maniacally laughing until they cry. Or crying until they laugh. It’s hard to tell, what with the obliterated jaw one of them must muscle through and the melted face with which the other must convey feeling. It’s an oddly affecting scene, although I suppose the sight and sound of a pair of painted demons cackling through charred and gnawed and otherwise fuckedup flesh can’t not be affecting, no matter how hacky the schlockmeister behind the camera. What happens in between borrows heavily from the Browning-Chaney canon of emotional cruelty, and while Iglesia is not quite capable of tapping into the eerie melancholy of something like The Unknown, he is rather adept at building set pieces that celebrate abjection and bodily harm, and he’s willing to go the distance to make you squirm. R. CHRIS STAMM. Hollywood Theatre.
Life in a Day
78 The line between popular enter-
tainment and home movies has been blurring in the age of YouTube, and it disappears altogether in a documentary funded by YouTube. The exercise—people worldwide submit 4,500 hours of footage they shot on July 24, 2010—is basically Andrew Sullivan’s “View From My Window” feature in motion. But the mood
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grows ominous, the confessions gain gravity, and soon the movie unfolds a subtext of everyday people trying to document themselves to avoid oblivion. There’s a lot to respect about this emphasis (somehow I doubt this film is going to repeat the phenomenon of Babies, if only because Terrified Old People is a less adorable concept), but the film’s best moments are its quietest. PG-13. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters. NEW
The Lion King 3D
It means “no worries,” except for that thing about to POKE YOU IN THE EYE. G. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Lloyd Mall, Sherwood, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
Midnight in Paris
77 Sorry to break it to you, New
York, but Woody Allen is cheating on you. Owen Wilson, convincingly stepping into the “Woody Allen role,” stars as Gil Pender, a screenwriter and self-described “Hollywood hack” who thinks of himself as a novelist born in the wrong era. On vacation in Paris, he wanders into the streets one night and tipsily stumbles upon a rip in the space-time continuum that transports him to the 1920s to party with his literary idols: F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. It’s a fairy tale for lit majors, and Allen’s best work in years, though little more than a charming trifle. PG-13. MATTHEW SINGER. Hollywood Theatre, Fox Tower.
One Day
24 Director Lone Scherfig introduces
us to Anne Hathaway’s Emma and Jim Sturgess’ Dexter, two miserable characters mired in non-events spanning 20 years. Neither a moving romance, compelling drama nor fascinating chronicle, this film lumbers from one insufferable moment to the next. One Day seems much more like eons. PG-13. KIMBERLY GADETTE. Cedar Hills.
Our Idiot Brother
55 Our Idiot Brother is an uncom-
monly affable little movie, a very indie teasing of latter-day hippies. A lot of it feels like a Portlandia sketch—specifically the organic farm bit, but slightly less funny— and I’m honestly grateful it wasn’t filmed here; that would have been a blow of stereotyping from which we’d never recover. As it stands, Our Idiot Brother is set in New York City and upstate, though it could be anywhere where young people are bewildered by having to be grownups. Paul Rudd plays the title character, a holy fool with a produce stand who goes to visit his sisters— Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks and Zooey Deschanel—who are a far sight more fouled up than he is, even if they weren’t recently jailed for selling weed to a uniformed cop. (The officer “just seemed really sad,” Rudd explains.) Rudd’s performance is oddly flat: It may be that playing such a beatific innocent saps the
thriller opens with a bang, followed by several more bangs, as a desperate man in a neatly trimmed goatee, holding his guts in with one bloody hand, slams into a chain-link fence and sprints down a rickety fire escape just a few scant yards ahead of a pair of carefully manicured, gun-waving thugs. Bang! A bullet ricochets past. Bang! Out of nowhere, our man is struck by a speeding motorcycle. The movie goes banging right on from there, as the pursuit of miraculously still living motorcycle-guy (an unsettlingly taciturn Roschdy Zem) ensnares a nurse-in-training, Samuel, (Gilles Lellouche) and his very pregnant wife, kidnapped before his eyes. Writer/director Fred Cavayé’s film is as loud and ugly and improbably plotted as anything by his American contemporaries, but remembers the vital truth that Sydney Pollack knew but Haggis and Greengrass and Schumacher have forgotten: when your ordinary-guy protagonist emerges from a 10-minute sprint through a subway tunnel, he should vomit on the sidewalk. He is fazed, and because he is fazed we fear for him. R. BEN WATERHOUSE. Living Room Theaters.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
17 In quick cuts of bright green and earthy brown and pure white flashing teeth, the opening scene makes a false promise: These motherfucking apes are going to get their revenge and it’s going to be awesome. OK, so the apes—or the Children of the Apes, anyway— do get a bit of revenge. But 105 minutes later, very little awesomeness has come to pass: just a lot of stiff, hammy lines from central beefcake James Franco and 90 million dollars’ worth of underwhelming action scenes you’ve already seen (assuming you’ve been to one of these overblown summer blockbusters before). The movie spoonfeeds us heap after generous heap of banal, pseudo-scientific backstory before leading us to a semi-climactic ape revolt on the stupid fucking Golden Gate Bridge—with most of the apes transforming from uncivilized beasts to a sophisticated Tom Clancy-style tactical assault force literally overnight. I’ve seen episodes of Lassie that made me ponder the human-animal relationship more than Rise did, and in fact this whole shit show reminded me more of Homeward Bound than it did of the 1968 Apes film that started it all. PG13. CASEY JARMAN. 99 Indoor Twin, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Lloyd Center, Tigard, Wilsonville, Sandy.
The River Why
60 For all The River Why’s pon-
derous grasps for the meaning of life, nobody can accuse the movie of trying to be too universal. Not after the hero, a young man named Augustine Orviston (Zach Gilford of NBC’s Friday Night Lights), explains his crisis in voiceover: “What can you say after you’ve spontaneously cremated your parents’ prize fish in the fireplace?” This is a highly specific dilemma, and I could not begin to guess what I would say—So long, and thanks for that one fish?—but our hero decides to leave Mom and Pop Orviston (Kathleen Quinlan and William Hurt) and go angling in the Coast Range, living in a creekside cabin with his tackle and fly lures. Augustine trades in the City of Man for the City of Trout. The problem is that fishing is a pastime that gives a person a lot of time alone with thoughts about what fishing means, and The River Why is compelled to voice all of them. This movie contains a character who introduces
SEPT. 14-20
MOVIES
S O N Y P I C T U R E S E N T E R TA I N M E N T
cry into a bowl of noodles), even as his rival—played by Nicholas Tse— remains one-dimensional. And Jackie Chan, in a small role as the cowardly chef, lends his character precisely the right balance of humility and ass-kickery: He’s involved in a particularly memorable fight scene marred only by kids cheering him on (“Stirfry them like vegetables!”). That’s Shaolin’s biggest deficiency: hammy dialogue. But, you know, that’s actually what wound up selling me on the film. In an especially tense battle scene, Lau asks his foe awkwardly “Can we not fight anymore?” Tse, sneering as usual, replies “What do you think?” I think a bunch of shit is about to explode. I am right. CASEY JARMAN. Hollywood Theatre.
Shark Night 3D STRAW DOGS himself with “I’m a philosopher” and talks in arcane diction about God while smoking a cigar. This movie also contains a drowned corpse which inspires questions about mortality. Unfortunately, they are not the same man. I probably wouldn’t feel compelled to say anything at length about The River Why, except that it was filmed along Tillamook’s steelhead-rich Wilson River, with a scene or two in Portland’s World Forestry Institute. Although technically part of the Portland indiemovie bloom, the movie actually feels like a holdout from an older version of the state: It’s based on a novel by David James Duncan epitomizing a pokey Northwestern transcendentalism that also sprouted Tom Robbins and especially Norman Maclean. Directed by journeyman Matthew Leutwyler, the adaptation is an admirable effort to make a movie without any plot whatsoever. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. NEW
Ruhr
[THREE NIGHTS ONLY, TBA] A landscape documentary on German concrete. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 7 pm WednesdayThursday and 4 pm Saturday, Sept. 14-15&17.
Sarah’s Key
75 Thanks to the cinematic adap-
tation of Tatiana de Rosnay’s New York Times bestseller Sarah’s Key, readers can now transcend literary isolation by experiencing soul-crushing quantities of human depravity in the open air of a darkened movie theater. Sarah’s Key weaves the life of Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas), a present-day journalist investigating the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup of 1942, with the story of 10-year-old Sarah Starzynski (Mélusine Mayance), who is targeted by that roundup during the Nazi occupation of France. PG13. SHAE HEALEY. Living Room Theaters.
Senna
65 Like the Formula One racecar
driver it profiles, this documentary tests the limits: Ayrton Senna pushed how fast his car could go, and Senna lives on the edge of alienating those unfamiliar with his sport. Anybody more fascinated than I with F1 car racing—anybody who has watched an entire race, say—is likely to take a good deal more pleasure from the movie than I did, though by the end of the thing I was no longer actively annoyed by the engines whining like mechanical mosquitoes. Director Asif Kapadia’s work is on par with other ESPN Films releases (which is to say it’s very good), and there’s a lot of tense footage from inside drivers’ meetings before controversial Japanese Grand Prix races. The film even becomes actively interesting for a stretch in the middle, as the Brazilian Casanova Senna feuds in the early ’90s with calculating French driver Alain Prost, who was surely the inspiration for Sacha Baron Cohen’s character in Talladega Nights. (Rivals Senna and Prost both drove cars imprinted with the Marlboro logo, which in hindsight seems like an emblem of
self-destruction.) The footage from cockpit cameras is alarming, especially as you begin to sense it will inevitably precede a fatality, and Senna suggests that racing is as the poet described life: first boredom, then fear. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
Seven Days in Utopia
20 Robert Duvall loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. This scheme involves playing golf with him for a week in a weedy Texas goat pasture until you realize there are more important things in life than playing golf. I would have happily accepted that revelation without sitting through a whole movie of golf, but here is the movie anyway, based on a book by a Christian sports psychologist, a book called God’s Sacred Journey. It is not the worst movie I have seen this year, but it is far and away the most boring. It is hard to imagine how it could be more boring—it is a series of motivational lessons, muttered by Duvall through a Vincent Price mustache to his pupil Lucas Black, followed by a musical montage recounting all the lessons that have been learned. Then there’s a tournament, though director Matthew Dean Russell takes great pains to emphasize that the outcome has no eternal significance. “You really couldn’t script it better than this,” says an announcer— a boast that’s sort of poignant, since the screenwriters must know they really could have. Seven Days in Utopia might have been sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, but instead it is endorsed by the Professional Golfers’ Association, which is presumably concerned that not enough white people like golf. It is hard to believe this movie exists, let alone that Duvall and Melissa Leo agreed to be in it, but I promise I’m not conjuring any of it up—not even the scene blatantly stolen from Caddyshack in which Duvall and Black hit the links for a perfect round threatened by a gathering thunderstorm. No one is hit by lightning. Rat farts! G. AARON MESH. Cornelius, Bridgeport.
NEW
Shaolin
65 Shaolin spends more of its time
dazzling audiences with camera tricks than it does with actual kungfu. The sweeping crane shot—that sounds like a martial arts move, but I’m really talking about a breathtaking-if-tactfully used mounted camera pan—wears out its welcome in the film’s opening minutes, scanning CGI battlefields strewn with freshly dead bodies and pools of bright-red blood. The music in the Chinese action flick is just as emotionally exploitative: A string section swells every time a character picks his nose. Yet despite this pushiness and other problems—the film’s willfully fuzzy take on Chinese military history and its Disney-fied crash course in Buddhism among them— this military period piece behemoth actually kind of works. Andy Lau, who plays the warlord-turned-monk protagonist, delivers a performance that grows more layered as the film progresses (dude knows how to
Sharks. At night. In 3-D. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Clackamas.
The Smurfs
They take Manhattan, in CGI form. No one on our staff could be persuaded to risk it. PG. 99 West Drive-In, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Bridgeport. NEW
The Sphere of Influence Tour
[ONE NIGHT ONLY] A snowboarding film. Hollywood Theatre. 8 pm Saturday, Sept. 17.
Spy Kids: All the Time in the World
Jessica Alba and little children spy on something. Not screened for critics. PG. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Bridgeport, Evergreen. NEW
Straw Dogs
The Sam Peckinpah rape-and-rage thriller is remade in Mississippi, for reasons we don’t fully comprehend. Not screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. R. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Cornelius, Bridgeport, City Center, Evergreen, Hilltop, Fox Tower, Lloyd Center, Tigard, Wilsonville.
Warrior
65 It may be unfair to compare
mixed martial arts flick Warrior with last Christmas’ widely acclaimed boxing biopic The Fighter. But they’re both about two brothers punching other men—and sometimes each other—in the face. Warrior is far more fanciful—the two brothers, unbeknownst to each other, end up fighting for a $5 million purse in the same world-class, eight-man MMA tournament in the most unlikely of circumstances—though the filmmakers appear to have put great thought into creating “real” characters whom American audiences can get behind. Tom Hardy’s character, Tommy, is a traumatized Iraq war vet, and Joel Edgerton’s Brendan is in danger of losing his family home to foreclosure. But in Warrior, the MMA sequences take a genuine starring role: About a quarter of the film is dedicated to the aforementioned tournament in all its bone-snapping glory. The fights are sweaty and dirty and shot right up in the actors’ armpits and groins. There are a few dubious pro-wrestling moves thrown in for show, but for the most part, the bouts are painfully realistic and utterly engrossing. You won’t care which of the brothers wins, but you will be on the edge of your seat to see how the bout is won. The problem isn’t really that Warrior, as a drama, can’t go toe-to-toe with the likes of The Fighter—they’re not even in the same weight class. It’s that far too many of the film’s 140 minutes are dedicated to that drama. The film’s core demographic is going to be the 700,000-odd people who order pay-per-view UFC; I doubt they care how genuinely heart-tugging the characters’ backstories are, and they probably don’t want to see two hours of it before any real blood is shed. PG-13. RUTH BROWN. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cinetopia Mill Plain, Pioneer Place, Bridgeport, Evergreen, Lloyd Mall, Sandy.
Willamette Week’s 2011
RESTAURANT GUIDE Our favorite places to brunch, lunch and dine.
Deadline to reserve ad space: SEPTEMBER 14th Publishes: OCTOBER 19TH call: 503.243.2122 email: advertising@wweek.com
Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
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SEPT. 16-22
M E R I E WA L L A C E T M & T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y F OX F I L M
BREWVIEWS
THE FIRST WALTZ: The musical montage is a disparaged and mostly abandoned trope, and maybe its rarity makes it more powerful—the two films that most affected me this year both worked their magic with it. Drive, which opens its first run this weekend (see page 53), enchants audiences with synth-heavy ’80s cruising and a swooning Europop song by College called “A Real Hero.” The Tree of Life, which opens its second run this weekend, is nothing but musical montage—Terrence Malick’s childhood reveries and sacred visions are like abstract stained glass that allows highRomantic compositions (especially Bedrich Smetana’s swooning “Vltava”) to shine through. These movies feel like dances. AARON MESH. Academy, Laurelhurst. Best paired with: Ninkasi Radiant Summer Ale. Also showing: Showgirls (Mission, 10 pm Saturday). Mon-Tue 07:00, 09:00 REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA Fri 11:30 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Sat 12:00
Regal Lloyd Center Stadium 10 Cinema
1510 NE Multnomah Blvd., 800-326-3264 BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR Wed 01:00, 02:50, 05:20, 07:50, 10:25 WARRIOR Wed 12:10, 03:20, 06:35, 09:50 THE DEBT Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 12:50, 03:50, 07:00, 10:10 APOLLO 18 Wed 12:40, 02:55, 05:15, 07:30, 09:55 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 03:35 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2: 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 10:00 RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 12:55, 03:55, 07:20, 10:15 THE HELP Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 03:25, 06:45, 10:05 OUR IDIOT BROTHER Wed 12:30, 03:00, 05:25, 08:00, 10:30 STRAW DOGS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed ATTACK THE BLOCK FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 02:30, 04:50, 07:10, 09:40 CONTAGION FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 02:35, 05:10, 07:45, 10:20 DRIVE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed THE GLOBE THEATRE PRESENTS HENRY VIII I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 12:40, 03:00, 05:20, 07:40, 10:00 THE LION KING 3D FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 12:00, 02:20, 04:40, 07:00, 09:25 MAYWEATHER VS. ORTIZ FIGHT LIVE Sat 06:00
Regal Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema
2320 Lloyd Center Mall, 800-326-3264 DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK Wed 12:25, 03:30, 06:30, 09:05 CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 03:15, 06:15, 09:15 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 03:05, 06:05, 08:55 COWBOYS & ALIENS
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 14, 2011 wweek.com
Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 03:25, 06:10, 09:30 SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IN 4D (3D) Wed 12:00 SHARK NIGHT 3D Wed 12:30, 06:35, 09:20 COLOMBIANA FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 03:10, 06:00, 09:00 CONTAGION Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 03:35, 06:25, 09:25 CREATURE Wed 12:35, 03:20, 06:20, 09:10 SHARK NIGHT Wed 03:00 BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 03:10, 09:00 WARRIOR Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 12:25, 03:30, 06:30, 09:30 APOLLO 18 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 03:20, 09:10 OUR IDIOT BROTHER Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 12:35, 06:20 THE LION KING 3D Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 06:05, 08:55 THE LION KING Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 12:00, 03:05
Laurelhurst Theater
2735 E Burnside St., 232-5511 SUPER 8 Fri 4:15, 7, Sat-Sun 1:15, 4:15, 7, Mon-Thurs 7 BLOW OUT Fri-Sun 9, MonThurs 9:20 BRIDESMAIDS Fri-Sun 4, 9:30, Mon-Thurs 9:30 TREE OF LIFE Fri 6:30, Sat-Sun 1, 6:30 BUCK Sat-Sun 1:45 HORRIBLE BOSSES Fri-Sun 4:40, 7:20, 9:45, Mon-Thurs 7:20, 9:45 BEGINNERS Fri 6:45, SatSun 1:30, 6:45, Mon-Thurs 6:45 TROLLHUNTER FriSun 4:30, 9, Mon-Thurs 9
Bagdad Theater and Pub 3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 BRIDESMAIDS Fri-SatMon-Wed 08:40 SUPER 8 Sat-Sun-Wed 06:00 HORRIBLE BOSSES FriSat-Mon 08:40 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Tue
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St., 503238-8899 ICONOCLAST BOYD RICE Wed 07:00 CONNECTED BELLFLOWER Fri-Sat-Sun-
Mission Theater and Pub 1624 NW Glisan St., 503249-7474 SUPER 8 Wed 05:30 HORRIBLE BOSSES Sun-Mon-Wed 07:50 BRIDESMAIDS SunWed 09:50 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Fri-SatTue BAD TEACHER Sun 05:30
Kennedy School Theater
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503249-7474 HORRIBLE BOSSES FriSat-Sun-Mon-Wed 02:30, 09:45 BRIDESMAIDS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Wed 07:15 ZOOKEEPER Fri-Sat-SunMon-Wed 03:00 WINNIE THE POOH Wed 05:30 GREEN LANTERN Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 02:30
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503281-4215 THE LAST CIRCUS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:30, 09:30 THE RIVER WHY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Wed 09:15 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:15 THE TREE OF LIFE Wed 09:40 SNAKE IN THE MONKEY’S SHADOW Wed 07:30 FILMUSIK: ORGAN GRINDERS SHAOLIN FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:30 BURIAL GROUND: THE NIGHTS OF TERROR Tue 07:30
Regal Fox Tower Stadium 10
846 SW Park Ave., 800326-3264 THE DEBT Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 11:55, 02:20, 04:50, 07:20, 09:45 CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE. Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:05, 02:25, 05:00, 07:35, 10:10 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 Wed 11:50, 02:30, 05:10 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:15, 02:40, 04:45, 07:05, 09:35 THE HELP Fri-Sat-
Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:35, 04:05, 07:00, 09:55 OUR IDIOT BROTHER Wed 12:25, 03:00, 05:20, 07:25, 09:30 STRAW DOGS Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed THE GUARD Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:55, 05:05, 07:15, 09:40 HIGHER GROUND Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:00, 02:35, 05:15, 07:40, 10:15 POINT BLANK Wed 07:50, 09:50 THE NAMES OF LOVE Wed 12:30, 02:45, 04:55, 07:10, 10:00 SENNA Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 02:50, 05:25, 07:45, 10:05 I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 12:40, 02:45, 04:45, 07:10, 09:25 LIFE, ABOVE ALL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 12:25, 02:40, 05:10, 07:25, 09:40
Living Room Theaters
341 SW 10th Ave., 971-2222010 LIFE IN A DAY Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 11:40, 02:50, 05:00, 07:40, 09:40 SARAH’S KEY Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:20, 02:10, 04:30, 07:00, 09:15 THE WHISTLEBLOWER Wed 12:00, 02:30, 07:30 FRIGHT NIGHT 3D FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:50, 04:15, 06:30, 08:50 TABLOID Wed 11:50, 05:10, 09:50 THE TRIP Wed 02:20, 04:50, 07:15, 09:30 CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 12:10, 02:40, 04:40, 06:45, 09:00 BRIGHTON ROCK Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:40, 02:30, 04:50, 07:15, 09:30 GAINSBOURG Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 11:50, 02:00, 05:00, 06:30, 09:10 POINT BLANK Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 12:00, 02:20, 04:20, 07:40, 09:40
Pioneer Place Stadium 6
340 SW Morrison St., 800326-3264 BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue-Wed 01:50, 04:50, 07:50, 10:10 WARRIOR Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:00, 04:10, 07:30, 10:30 APOLLO 18 Wed 01:10, 04:00, 07:00, 10:20 RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue-Wed 01:30, 04:30, 07:10, 10:10 SHARK NIGHT 3D Wed 01:20, 10:05 CONTAGION Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 01:40, 04:40, 07:40, 10:25 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed SHARK NIGHT Wed 04:20 HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 01:10, 07:00 THE LION KING 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 04:20, 07:20, 09:50 THE LION KING Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 01:20
Academy Theater
7818 SE Stark St., 503-2520500 BRIDESMAIDS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 06:45, 09:20 WINNIE THE POOH Wed 05:00 PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 04:15 SUPER 8 Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:00, 09:30 TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON Wed 04:25 HORRIBLE BOSSES Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue-Wed 07:30, 09:40 ZOOKEEPER Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 04:30 THE TREE OF LIFE Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 07:00 Subject To Change. Call Theaters Or Visit Wweek.com/ movietimes For The Most Up-to-date Information FRIDAY-THURSDAY, SEPT. 16-22, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED