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WWEEK.COM
VOL 38/11 01.18.2012
THE FASTEST-GROWING GROUP OF INMATES IN OREGON: WOMEN. A LOOK INSIDE COFFEE CREEK. PAGE 14
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NEWS BRADY’S ROLE AT NEW SEASONS. FOOD LUC LAC’S CHIC MAKEOVER. MUSIC YOUTH LAGOON’S WARM HEART.
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Visit these Portland - Across from Powell’s Books 1016 W. Burnside St. Portland, OR 97209 503-222-2029 2
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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Eugene - New Location! 391 Coburg Rd. Eugene, OR 97401 541-685-7285
CONTENT
STREET: Fur is on the loose. Page 21.
NEWS
4
FOOD & DRINK
24
LEAD STORY
14
MUSIC
31
CULTURE
21
MOVIES
46
HEADOUT
23
CLASSIFIEDS
51
STAFF Editor-in-Chief Mark Zusman EDITORIAL Managing Editor for News Brent Walth Arts & Culture Editor Martin Cizmar Staff Writers Hannah Hoffman, Nigel Jaquiss, Corey Pein Copy Chief Rob Fernas Copy Editors Matt Buckingham, Kat Merck Assistant Arts & Culture Editor Ben Waterhouse Movies Editor Aaron Mesh Music Editor Casey Jarman Editorial Intern Melinda Hasting CONTRIBUTORS Classical Brett Campbell Dance Heather Wisner Food Ruth Brown Visual Arts Richard Speer
Erik Bader, Judge Bean, Nathan Carson, Devan Cook, Shane Danaher, Jonathan Frochtzwajg, Robert Ham, Shae Healey, Jay Horton, Matthew Korfhage, AP Kryza, Hannah Levin, Jessica Lutjemeyer, Jeff Rosenberg, Matt Singer, Chris Stamm, Mark Stock
Production Assistant Brittany McKeever
PRODUCTION Production Manager Kendra Clune Art Director Ben Mollica Graphic Designers Soma Honkanen, Adam Krueger, Brittany Moody, Carolyn Richardson, Dylan Serkin Production Intern Lana MacNaughton
WWEEK.COM Web Production Brian Panganiban Web Editor Ruth Brown
ADVERTISING Director of Advertising Jane Smith Display Account Executives Sara Backus, Maria Boyer, Michael Donhowe, Greg Ingram, Janet Norman, Kyle Owens Classifieds Account Executives Ashlee Horton, Tracy Betts Advertising Assistant Ashley Grether Marketing and Events Manager Jess Sword Marketing and Promotions Intern Jeanine Gaitan Give!Guide Director Brittany Cornett
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
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MUSICFESTNW Executive Director Trevor Solomon OPERATIONS Accounting Manager Andrea Manning Credit & Collections Shawn Wolf Office Manager & Receptionist Nick Johnson Office Corgi 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. A.A.N. Association of ALTERNATIVE NEWSWEEKLIES This newspaper is published on recycled newsprint using soy-based ink.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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2012 International Speaker Series THE NATION’S PREMIER SPEAKER SERIES FOCUSING ON INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
FEBRUARY 3, 2012
INBOX DRINKING LEADS TO DRIVING
Politics and Principles
As someone who drives to California and Nevada a few times a year, and purchases large quantities of alcohol for personal use, I can call BS on the OLCC’s claim of its prices being cheaper [“Booze Wars,” WW, Jan. 11, 2012]. Deregulation in those states forces sellers to compete on price, allowing customers to pay much less for alcohol than in Oregon. There’s a good reason you see billboards on I-5 advertising stores just across the state line in California. Medford residents know where to go for alcohol. Portland residents will soon cross the river into Vancouver for cheaper alcohol. The OLCC will start losing money June 1 if they don’t do something about it. Here’s a nickel’s worth of free advice: deregulate and tax the hell out of alcohol. It’s a vice— people will pay for it regardless—but allow sellers to compete on price and pass those savings to consumers (while still making money). —“tallperson”
Jim Lehrer
Journalist; News Anchor, PBS NewsHour
In this election year, International Speaker Series presenters will examine the core principles and challenges that define America’s place in the world. What does America stand for? What should our role be in the global economic system? What are our obligations to the oppressed? What does leadership mean in the 21st century?
SERIES TICKETS AND INFORMATION worldoregon.org | (503) 306-5252
TAKING OUR MEDICINE MARCH 11, 2012
MARCH 27, 2012
APRIL 27, 2012
Amartya Sen
David Brooks
Sima Samar
Economics, Ethics & Justice
Inside the American Mind
The Question of Afghanistan
Economist and Nobel Laureate
New York Times Columnist
SERIES SPONSORS:
Human Rights Advocate
All lectures begin at 7:00 p.m. at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
E C A L P RE
I am shocked that you are willing to put out such misinformation based on a single biased source (Oxford Handbook of Alternative Medicine) [“Heretical Healing,” WW, Jan. 11, 2012]. The article is ignorant, grossly inaccurate and a complete insult to the alternative health practitioners supporting WW with ads on the page opposite the article. Alternative medicine is not studied by Western science often or well. This is because pharmaceutical companies and universities do not
stand to make money from alternative medicine, and it takes money to fund a study. The limited studies on herbs are usually done with the sole purpose of isolating a chemical compound so a company may reproduce it and standardize or synthesize it. There is simply no profit in proving a “weed” that grows in your yard, when properly administered, can have superior healing effects to a drug that costs $15 per pill. In the case of Eastern medicine, there are more than 5,000 years of trial and error and case study behind what is practiced today. I don’t think the author’s cursory reading of his single source is sufficient to sum up or advise readers in their choices of alternative medicines. —Andrea Shuman Southeast Portland
DOWN ON THE FARM
[Farmers] in Oregon all receive a generous subsidy [“Green for Acres,” WW, Jan. 11, 2012]. Their property tax is not based on the value of their farms, but on some arcane calculation that allows them to pay much lower property taxes than the rest of us. —“Bob Whelan” Great, they want my tax dollars to subsidize rich people’s finicky eating habits. —“Stretch” 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
E D A R G P U
15%
SAVE off already low prices on
COMPONENTS Tell me, O wise one: What does a flambéed French saint have to do with the Rose City? I ask because recently, in Laurelhurst, I came upon the improbable statue of one Joan of Arc. —Koan of Arc Whatever floats your boat, Koan. Still, I hope you wiped her off when you were done—we just had that thing gilded. But seriously, folks: The Jeanne d’Arc that so dominates the roundabout at Northeast 39th Avenue and Glisan Street is a full-size reproduction of a statue that still stands at the Place des Pyramides in Paris. It was given to Portland in 1924 by Dr. Henry Waldo Coe, who’d seen it in France and thought it was cool. Still, why a French saint and not, say, a beaver with a salmon in its mouth, riding a bear? Well, I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, 4
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
France was basically America’s girlfriend. For years, the two love-struck nations exchanged gooey mash notes in the form of statuary, including the Statue of Liberty. Coe, as smitten as anyone, decided that a reproduction of Emmanuel Frémiet’s Joan of Arc would be a good way to slip our old lady the tongue while also commemorating the Americans who perished on French soil in World War I. Incidentally, we’re not the only U.S. city with a copy of this particular Joan—Philadelphia has one, too. They call theirs “Joanie on the Pony,” which I think we should straight-up steal. Eventually, we decided that, while being overrun by Germany in one war was tragic, it happening twice was simply careless, and France, for her part, decided we were just dicks, which we are. Thus, our nations’ affair came to an end. At least we’ll always have the world’s largest hood ornament to remember it by. QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com
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GRAND OPENING JANUARY 25TH - FEBRUARY 8TH
PORTLAND | 1115 NW GLISAN ST. | 503-223-3724 (CORNER OF NW GLISAN AND NW 11TH ST.) MON - SAT: 9 - 8, SUN: 11 - 6
JOIN US ON JANUARY 25 TH Celebrate our grand opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 12pm and an afternoon of live art, demos, food, fun and live music! FIRST 100 GUESTS AT 9AM ON 1/25 WILL RECEIVE A GIFT TOTE LOADED WITH ART MATERIALS, VALUED AT $100*
30off %
*GUESTS MUST PRESENT RAFFLE TICKET AFTER 12:30PM ON JANUARY 25TH TO CLAIM GIFT TOTE. NO EXCEPTIONS WILL BE MADE. NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOST OR STOLEN RAFFLE TICKETS.
ENTIRE PURCHASE
OF NON-SALE, IN-STOCK ITEMS VALID 1/25/12 TO 2/8/12 Blick Art Materials, Retail Inc., coupon must be surrendered at time of purchase; no copies will be honored. Limit one coupon per visit. Valid only on non-sale, in-stock items. Not valid with any other discounts or promotion, phone/mail/internet orders, furniture, custom framing and printing and purchases of gift cards.
CUSTOM FRAMING
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ENTIRE FRAMING PACKAGE
Offer good only towards purchase of complete custom framing package, which must include mounting and fitting of artwork. Offer not valid towards purchase of individual frame mouldings not part of a complete custom framing package. Limit 3 custom frame packages per coupon. Offer not valid towards ready-made frames. Coupon must be surrendered at time of purchase; no copies will be honored. Limit one coupon per visit. Not valid with any other discounts or previously placed orders.
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LARGEST SELECTION OF QUALITY ART SUPPLIES IN THE PORTLAND AREA! 6
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
MORGAN GREEN-HOPKINS
2011 GIVE!GUIDE FINAL REPORT
NEWS
MEYER MEMORIAL TRUST CHALLENGE
Awards $500 (or $250 when a tie occurs) to the two organizations in each category achieving the greatest number of donors under the age of 36.
Animals
Cat Adoption Team Feral Cat Coalition (tie) Oregon Humane Society (tie)
Arts
PDX Pop Now! Independent Publishing Resource Center
Community
Portland Fruit Tree Project Bicycle Transportation Alliance
Education
Right Brain Initiative Portland Youth Builders
Environment
Friends of Trees 1000 Friends of Oregon (tie) Friends of the Columbia Gorge (tie)
Social Action
Sisters of the Road Portland Women’s Crisis Line
G!G RAISES $ 1,588,689 TO OUR READERS: WOW! Between Nov. 9 and Dec. 31, more than 5,000 of you gave nearly $1.6 million to 100 local nonprofits and two statewide organizations through Willamette Week’s Give!Guide. That’s a 27 percent increase in donors over 2010—and a 37 percent increase in donations. This unprecedented generosity brings the total you have given back to our community during Give!Guide’s eight-year existence to well over $5 million. In addition, this year’s Skidmore Prizes provided $16,000 to four winners, and the Meyer Memorial Trust chipped in another $8,000 as incentives to encourage giving by readers under the age of 36. All of us at WW are humbled by your generosity and proud to have been able to facilitate this annual giving program. We’re also awed by the huge effort marshaled by 2011’s participating nonprofits. They held special events, worked social media overtime, and came up with amazing incentives of their own. Our annual effort is guided by one basic principle, engraved at the base of the Skidmore Fountain in Ankeny Square: “Good citizens are the riches of a city.” Portland is fortunate so many of you live here. WW’s Give!Guide is also fortunate to have so many supporters in this effort. Elsewhere on this page, the names of special helpers are listed. All of us who worked on WW’s 2011 Give!Guide appreciate your many kindnesses, both large and small, as well as your words of encouragement, and I apologize in advance that there’s not room to
Wellness
Planned Parenthood ColumbiaWillamette Growing Gardens
Youth
name all of you individually. Special thanks go to G!G’s executive director, Brittany Cornett, whose commitment and organizational skills are, in a word she likes to use a lot for other purposes, “perfect.” One more important note: Your example has encouraged publishers in other cities to initiate programs patterned after the Give!Guide model, so that at the end of last year weekly newspaper readers in Colorado Springs, Colo.; Monterey, Calif.; and Lexington, Ky., raised more than $1.5 million for nonprofits in their communities. We will be back in 2012. The process begins in July, when applications to participate in WW’s Give!Guide and nomination forms for the Skidmore Prize will be available on our website. Look for the announcement here and on wweek.com. For the moment, enjoy some of the many incentives you received for giving to this year’s effort and keep in mind how important you are to the health and well-being of our community. Thank you,
Richard H. Meeker Publisher
My Voice Music p:ear
BUSINESS PARTNERS
A to Z Wineworks Bank of America Bob’s Red Mill Chinook Book Clear Creek Distillery Comcast Davis Wright Tremaine E & R Wine Shop IKEA Moonstruck Chocolates New Seasons Market OakTree Digital Oregon Community Foundation Rex Hill Winery STAM Steven Smith Teamaker Stumptown Coffee Roasters Thompson Kessler Wiest & Borquist PC Umpqua Bank Vertis Communications Widmer Brothers
THE 2011 GIVE!GUIDE TEAM
P.S.: The center spread of this week’s paper contains our first-ever Volunteer Guide. It’s designed to show you how to give something other than money to local nonprofits—your equally valuable sweat equity. Please give it a look.
Melissa Casillas, Brittany Cornett, Rob Fernas, Soma Honkanen, Andrea Manning, Brittany Moody Richard Meeker, Jess Sword, Seth Warren, Ben Waterhouse, Shawn Wolf, Mark Zusman
RESULTS, BY PARTICIPATING NONPROFIT “I Have a Dream” Foundation .............$3,660 1000 Friends of Oregon ....................... $16,146 Adelante Mujeres ....................................... $6,815 American Red Cross ............................... $5,915 Animal Aid .................................................. $12,735 Artichoke Community Music ................ $6,415 Audubon Society .................................... $12,390 Basic Rights Education Fund ............ $10,270 Bicycle Transportation Alliance ......$32,358 Big Brothers Big Sisters ......................... $4,821 Blue Sky ........................................................ $4,100 Bradley Angle ............................................ $17,673 Bus Project ..................................................$4,667 Camp Fire Columbia ..............................$12,835 Cat Adoption Team.................................$51,853 Children’s Book Bank.............................. $6,367 Children’s Healing Art Project ........... $4,066 Children’s Relief Nursery..................... $10,365 Circus Project ............................................$10,081 Classroom Law Project ......................... $14,214 Community Cycling Center ............. $44,925
Community Warehouse ........................ $16,016 Compassion & Choices of Oregon ..... $3,471 Defunkt Theatre ............................................$700 Dental Foundation ....................................$7,283 Dougy Center .............................................$4,985 Dress for Success ...................................$16,756 Elders in Action ......................................... $5,739 Engineers Without Borders .................$5,085 Ethos Music Center ................................ $10,756 Farmers Ending Hunger ......................... $7,765 FearNoMusic .................................................$4,110 Feral Cat Coalition .................................$35,724 Forest Park Conservancy.....................$16,795 Freshwater Trust ..................................... $13,540 Friends of Outdoor School ............... $13,860 Friends of the Children ........................ $10,616 Friends of the Columbia Gorge........$37,596 Friends of Trees ....................................... $18,034 Friends of Zenger Farm .......................... $7,041 Girls Inc. ........................................................$2,430 Giving Tree...................................................$11,633
Growing Gardens .................................... $14,794 Habitat for Humanity ............................$37,045 Hacienda CDC ............................................ $4,597 Hand2Mouth................................................ $2,355 Harper’s Playground................................$3,620 Hollywood Theatre ..................................$3,650 Home Free ....................................................$1,905 IPRC ..................................................................17,584 JOIN ................................................................$31,321 Literary Arts ................................................ $9,565 Live Wire! Radio ....................................... $13,728 Loaves & Fishes ...................................... $22,902 Mercy Corps .............................................. $41,144 Morrison Child and Family Services $8,804 My Voice Music ........................................... $8,215 Neighborhood House ...........................$26,786 Newspace Center for Photography ..$1,620 NxNE Community Health Center ... $30,284 Northeast Portland Tool Library ....... $3,635 Northwest Dance Project ...................... $4,185 NW Documentary......................................$7,343
Oregon Ballet Theatre ............................ $3,295 Oregon College of Art and Craft ...... $2,225 Oregon Cultural Trust ......................... $175,392 Oregon Humane Society ..................... $50,451 Oregon Public Broadcasting .............$29,356 Oregon Wild.............................................. $16,845 p:ear ..............................................................$25,527 PAW Team .................................................$21,035 PDX Pop Now! ............................................ $6,743 PHAME Academy .....................................$11,032 Planned Parenthood ......................... $109,442 Playworks ......................................................$1,045 PlayWrite Inc. .............................................$8,035 Portland Fruit Tree Project ................ $13,442 Portland Homeless Family Solutions $7,935 Portland Playhouse ................................ $8,875 Portland Women’s Crisis Line ........... $10,270 Portland Youth Builders ........................$15,071 Potluck in the Park ....................................$8,762 Project POOCH .........................................$12,585 Q Center.........................................................$2,763
Raphael House of Portland ..................$14,215 ReBuilding Center ....................................$2,450 Returning Veterans Project..................$9,088 Right Brain Initiative................................$8,590 Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls .................$8,364 Schoolhouse Supplies .............................$8,014 Self Enhancement Inc............................ $17,542 Sexual Assault Resource Center .......$6,944 Shadow Project ....................................... $15,266 Sisters of the Road...................................$31,185 Street Roots ................................................ $17,142 Urban Farm Collective ...........................$4,036 Urban Gleaners .........................................$21,587 Wallace Medical Concern ................... $21,990 Wetlands Conservancy ........................... $3,831 Willamette Riverkeeper ......................... $7,070 Wordstock................................................... $4,440 Write Around Portland............................. $9,118
TOTAL ..............................$1,588,689 Figures rounded to the nearest dollar.
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
7
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The arrival of big-box retail in downtown Portland encountered another snag last week. Target Corp. has long been eyeing a downtown Portland location, and in October the Daily Journal of Commerce reported that the Minneapolis-based company was finalizing a lease for space on the second and third floors of the Galleria Building at 600 SW 10th Ave. But on Jan. 13, attorneys for a current third-floor tenant, Aspect Education, a subsidiary of Kaplan Inc., filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Portland seeking to prevent what they call the early termination of Aspect’s lease. The building is owned by the Bill Naito Company; its general counsel, Tom Davis, tells WW the dispute, which he described as “sensitive,” is on its way to being settled out of court and that Target’s plans won’t be affected. The tenant’s attorney, Dustin Robert Swanson of Perkins Coie, declined comment. Multnomah County Elections Director Tim Scott has upheld the eligibility of Metro Council District 5 candidate Helen Ying after an opponent, Michael Durrow, requested a formal investigation of her residency status. Durrow’s Jan. 7 letter to Scott cited a WW story raising questions whether Ying lived in a small Northwest Portland condo purchased in 2010 and located inside District 5, or a large Clackamas County home purchased in the 1990s inside District 1 (“Home Away From Home,” Jan. 4, 2012). Scott interviewed Ying on Jan. 11, and obtained her assurances that she would file her incometax returns from the District 5 address and receives mail there. In a Jan. 13 letter to Durrow, Scott said he concluded that Ying had properly registered to vote in the district at least one year prior to the date she would take office in 2013 and had therefore “met the requirements to be a candidate for Metro Councilor for District 5.” Which means Ying’s name will appear on the ballot, along with those of Durrow, Terry Parker YING and Sam Chase.
Oregon Cultural Trust
Corrections: Last week’s cover story, “Booze Wars,” incorrectly characterized a wine distribution practice. Currently, once wine is delivered to a store, the store has no other option than to sell it. The wine cannot legally be moved. And Oregon’s rate of alcohol-related driving fatalities is slightly below, not above, the national average. Separately, the promotional text appearing on WW boxes last week, regarding a story about a proposal to tax sugar-added drinks in Multnomah County, was misleading: County officials are not endorsing the signature-gathering campaign to get the proposed measure on the November ballot. Finally, the same story, “Sugar Fee Soda,” misstated the estimated costs of signature-gathering for the campaign; the correct figure is $30,000. WW regrets the errors. Read more Murmurs and daily scuttlebutt.
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STEVE MORGAN
CODA Research 503-239-8400 ext. 254
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POLITICS: An iconic local business enters the mayoral race. TRAVEL: It’s sunny at the South Pole, says one Portlander. COVER STORY: State laws are putting more women in prison.
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EXTRA SEASONING RECORDS RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT MAYORAL CANDIDATE EILEEN BRADY’S RÉSUMÉ. BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS
njaquiss@wweek.com
Early this month, New Seasons Market announced plans to build its 13th store on a vacant lot in North Portland’s Eliot neighborhood. That’s good news for the listless economy and the upscale grocery chain, which employs about 2,000 people. It’s even better news for Eileen Brady, the Portland mayoral candidate who has touted her role as a “co-founder” of New Seasons as her primary qualification for the top job at City Hall. “I know what it’s like to have thousands of people depend on you for a paycheck to support their families,” she said in a speech last year. Brady’s campaign website highlights the grocery chain’s story, and she does as well on the campaign trail, talking about how she “and her husband, along with two other families and many friends, co-found[ed] the Portlandbased business” in 1999. It’s understandable why Brady would make her connection to New Seasons the centerpiece of her campaign. Since it opened in 2000, New Seasons has joined Powell’s Books and Stumptown Coffee on the short list of businesses that help define Portland. “She always identifies herself as a New Seasons founder,” says Jim Moore, a political science professor at Pacific University in Forest Grove. “She’s relying a lot on the New Seasons brand because it’s popular, has spread throughout the city, and is seen as a local entity that has done well and reinvests in the community.” Brady supporters haven’t missed the message. At a Brady campaign rally in December, MergerTech CEO Nitin Khanna said he will make City Hall a clean, inviting and well-run place, “just like New Seasons.” But previously unreported public documents raise questions about Brady’s actual role in the company, and whether her claim to be a “co-founder” has any substantive meaning. The documents provide details on the finances of a large, privately held company. In the context of the 2012 mayoral race, however, the ownership stakes the documents reveal are more notable for what they don’t contain: The name Eileen Brady. “Co-founder” is a term of art, not a legal definition. It is the title Brady provides for her time at New Seasons on her LinkedIn résumé. In a previous version, Brady described herself as a “founding co-owner.” In an interview Jan. 16 at their Mount Tabor home, Brady and her husband, former New Seasons CEO Brian Rohter, addressed exactly what role Brady played in the company. When pressed, Brady acknowledged she was never an employee, officer or director of New Seasons. “I was never on the payroll,” she said. She never had an office or a phone number there, nor
EILEEN BRADY
was she ever paid for any of the time she says she put in. During the time New Seasons was starting up, Brady held full-time, paying jobs with other organizations. Nevertheless, Brady insists she played a major role in creating and marketing the New Seasons brand and overseeing a host of important tasks. She says she conducted focus groups, acted as company spokeswoman, wrote the New Seasons’ employee manual, established the company’s health insurance program and even helped edit headlines and copy for the store’s ads. Jala Smith, an early New Seasons employee who served as a creative director for nine years, recalls Brady being heavily involved. “She was a significant contributor,” Smith says. “This,” Brady said, “was Brian’s and my business.” Rohter backs up her story. “New Seasons Market would not have been started or been successful without Eileen’s contributions,” he says. While acknowledging that “it’s a fair question because of the opaqueness of the term ‘founder,’” Rohter adds, “there’s an undercurrent of sexism—you can just look at the blogs.” So what does the public record say? Oregon law requires companies seeking liquor licens-
es—whether they’re dive bars or grocery stores—to make thorough disclosures of their ownership structure to the Oregon Liquor Control Commission. The transparency requirements exist in part to deter organized crime. Filing a false application violates state law and can result in license revocation. In 2000, shortly after New Seasons was founded, the company filed such a declaration with the OLCC. Those records show just three original investors in the business: Stan Amy, Chuck Eggert and Rohter. On the form, the OLCC asks, “Will anyone else not signing this application share in the ownership or receive a percentage of profits or bonus from the business?” Rohter, who filed the OLCC papers, checked the box that read “no.” Rohter explains he answered “no” merely to shield Brady from any potential liability should New Seasons fail. He says he always considered any money he put into the company a joint investment with his wife, and says most of their initial investment came from her savings. OLCC records also show that Amy and Eggert bore the lion’s share of the initial risk in the company. Amy, who was a substantial investor and one-time CEO CONT. on page 11 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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of Nature’s Northwest, New Seasons’ predecessor company, originally held 44.5 percent of New Seasons. Eggert, another major Nature’s investor, owned another 44.5 percent. Rohter held 11 percent, a figure he and Brady say grew over the years. In campaign literature, Brady says she and Rohter “risked our entire life savings…to start New Seasons Market.” That claim appears to be an exaggeration. OLCC filings show Rohter’s initial cash investment in New Seasons was $220,000. In those filings, he listed his and Brady’s net worth as $712,000. The couple now says they later invested more sweat equity and money—everything they had except retirement accounts and checking accounts—ultimately bringing their stake in New Seasons to 24 percent. It’s difficult to find independent confirmation of Brady’s role as a co-founder from New Seasons’ other founders. Eggert—who, with Amy, owned and sold Nature’s Northwest before they started New Seasons, and now runs Pacific Natural
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“SHE’S RELYING ON THE NEW SEASONS BRAND BECAUSE IT’S POPULAR.” —JIM MOORE, POLITICAL SCIENTIST Foods, a manufacturer of soups and soy products—declined repeated requests to discuss Brady’s role. He has not contributed to her campaign. Amy, likewise, would not answer questions about Brady. He has donated $10,000 to Brady’s campaign, and his wife, Christy Eugenis, has donated another $10,000. Both men referred questions to current New Seasons CEO Lisa Sedlar, who did not join the company until five years after its founding. “I wasn’t here at the time,” Sedlar says when asked about Brady’s early role. “But New Seasons would not be New Seasons if Eileen had not contributed so greatly.” There’s no disputing New Seasons grew into a major success—so much so that one of the Northwest’s savviest investment groups wanted in on the action. In late 2009, Rohter announced the company was selling a minority stake to Endeavour Capital, a Portland-based buyout firm that has invested in other local companies. “We’re very pleased to announce that Endeavour Capital, Portland’s own private capital firm and a leader in helping food and retail companies move to broad-based employee ownership, is becoming an investor in New Seasons Market,” Rohter announced in a Dec. 9, 2009, post on New Seasons’ blog. “I want to emphasize that the company is not being sold,” he added. That characterization was at odds with documents New Seasons filed with the OLCC in March 2010. The documents show that Endeavour Capital bought a majority interest—55.44 percent of New Seasons—for $31.1 million. That purchase price valued the entire chain at $56.1 million. Another consequence of the sale was to essentially cash Rohter out of his then-20-percent stake in New Seasons, for about $11.2 million. After the sale, Amy and Eggert still own a combined 44 percent of New Seasons. (Rohter says a stock-option plan will ultimately return majority ownership of New Seasons to Amy, Eggert and its employees, but that hasn’t happened yet.) Rohter now owns less than 1 percent of the company. He left as CEO in 2010 and is no longer a board member. Brady’s subsequent entry into the mayoral race placed New Seasons, however awkwardly, into the political discussion, although Sedlar, New Seasons’ CEO, says the company does not endorse or contribute to candidates—including Brady. Endeavour Capital’s principals have contributed generously to Brady’s campaign—$8,000 so far. But the description of New Seasons on the Endeavour website does not support Brady’s background story. “The company was founded in 1999 by three pioneers in the natural foods industry,” Endeavour’s website reads. “Endeavour developed a relationship with the three primary owners over many years.” Brady was not one of them. Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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NEWS
TRAVEL
MIKEY KAMPMANN
PORTLAND DROPS AT THE SOUTH POLE. COURTESY OF MIKEY KAMPMANN
WW: Have you seen any penguins? Mikey Kampmann: No. 1 most annoying question we get. I haven’t seen any penguins. Apparently a skua [seabird] flew past the station one day and they announced it over the PA, but I missed it. Other than that, the only life we’ve seen is a slug that came here on a head of cabbage. We tried keeping it as a pet until it died. I assume you have some everyday luxuries, like a bar. What IPAs are on tap? The South Pole doesn’t have a proper bar. We can buy booze at the store and drink wherever. I like to drink Speight’s Old Dark, a New Zealand beer we get here. That or whiskey. Or both. What about the coffee? Before I left, I decided to exclusively drink Legare’s coffee—my favorite coffee in Portland. Jonathan [Legare] insisted I take 10 pounds of his coffee with me so I could trade with Russians while I was here. In return for 1 pound of beans, I received a bottle of vodka and a pistol. It’s been really important to me having that coffee here. I look forward to my bowl of coffee everyday, and it reminds me that one day soon I’ll be back in Portland.
BY PAT R I C I A SAUTH O FF
243-2122
In late October, Mikey Kampmann left Southeast Portland’s Clinton Street neighborhood for a summer vacation of sorts. Kampmann, a 25-year-old comic and occasional Portlandia cast member, is spending four months working as a cook at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. An American scientific research center that focuses on meteorology, astronomy and astrophysics, it employs approximately 200 people in the summer and 50 in the winter. WW interviewed Kampmann by email and phone (it’s a 21-hour time difference) about Antarctic cuisine, retro fashion and the relatively enviable weather. “It’s not as cloudy,” he says, “and the sun is bigger than I’ve ever seen. It just does circles in the sky. It’s trippy.” Kampmann also blogs about his adventure at mikeygoingdown.tumblr.com.
Where does the food you eat come from? We presume it’s all local. The South Pole has about a two-year supply of frozen food in an underground food arch. About once a week during the summer we get freshies (fruit, veggies and eggs) from New Zealand, depending on weather. Back in Portland, I work for Groundwork Organics, an organic farm, and I thought I appreciated fresh fruit and veggies at the farmers market, but now when I see freshies I’m even more thankful. It’s remarkable that you can eat a fresh avocado at the South Pole, or even just an apple. Part of the space-stationlike vibe [here] is the greenhouse, which does grow a nice amount of greens, including kale! Also, alien meat is pretty good. How do you entertain yourselves? There are some fun nights here: some big
dance parties, Scrabble and cribbage are huge, watching movies, and of course looking for aliens. My favorite thing is to walk away from the station and sit in the sun in the flat, white nothing. I recently found a spot I call “The Beach” because the ice looks like the ocean, and where I like to sit sorta looks like the beach. I brought my boombox, too, so I’ll play music and just sit and enjoy that nothingness. I’ve enjoyed making some absurd videos. Also, checking out the science happening here has been fascinating, even if I can’t understand any of it. What’s the dating scene like? There are free condoms in every bathroom. That said, I think a lot of people just take the condoms ’cause they’re feeling overconfident. People are definitely hooking up. South Pole fashion. Portlandy? Everybody is mostly wearing the same thing, a “Big Red” parka, Carhartt overalls, bunny boots, gloves and goggles. Definitely lots of gross beards. Not nearly enough cutoff denim as Portland, which is too bad, and thankfully not as much flannel. For parties, people wear some outrageous clothes, most of which have been left here over the years. The ’80s are definitely still going on here at the South Pole. How did you end up there, anyway? I’m following in the footsteps of my friend who worked in Antarctica. I thought about doing this for three years and finally realized that if I didn’t do it now then I never would. So I applied, and a week later I had the job. Is the South Pole everything you thought it would be? It doesn’t seem to belong to any place or any time. Until you land here, you can’t feel how strange it is. It’s fucking strange. I’ve completely fallen in love with the landscape and find it fun to walk out into minus-25 degrees and think it actually feels pretty warm. It’s definitely been harder than I thought it would be, and it’s made me a tougher person. Life in Portland is so fucking easy.
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JAIL BIRDS THE FASTEST-GROWING GROUP OF INMATES IN OREGON: WOMEN. A LOOK INSIDE COFFEE CREEK. BY HA N N A H HOFFMA N
hhoffman@wweek.com
PHOTOS BY LEA H N ASH
LEAHNASH.COM
The archetypal prisoner of the last century wore stripes and carried a ball and chain. In the early part of the 21st century, he wore an orange jumpsuit. The typical 2012 inmate may instead look like Dawn Pearson. Pearson is a 42-year-old mother of four who is serving more than two years at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility for spending $342 with a stolen credit card at Walmart, Shell, Tobaccoville USA, Ross Dress for Less, Fred Meyer, Dollar Tree and Dairy Queen. This inmate’s most distinguishing characteristic? Pearson is a woman. Instead of orange, she wears blue. Instead of tattoos, she wears heavy black eyeliner, and her bangs look like they miss the ’80s. Pearson’s daughter was initially blamed for the stolen credit card because it was lifted from her middle-school principal. “She was so humiliated,” Pearson says, crying. “My children have probably paid the biggest price for my coming to prison.” Taxpayers are paying a high price as well. Pearson is part of a largely unnoticed but expensive trend in Oregon—the increase in the incarceration of nonviolent criminals. And this development has sent women to prison much faster than men. In the past 10 years, the number of men in Oregon’s prison system increased by 28 percent. During that same period, the number of female inmates grew by 86 percent. Last year, Gov. John Kitzhaber formed the Oregon Commission on Public Safety to study how to rein in corrections costs. The commission found the prison population had increased much faster than Oregon’s population during the past 30 years. What the Commission has yet to confront is how females are the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, and that imprisoning women, when you consider all the costs, is more expensive than imprisoning men. Females require more staff, medicine, programs and time—with counselors, visitors and caseworkers—than men. In addition, more than 75 percent of Oregon’s female prisoners are mothers, which often means the state has to take care of their kids. Sometimes, REPEAT OFFENDER: Dawn Pearson, 42, is in Coffee Creek it means the state pays to deliver their babies. prison for the second time on identity-theft charges. 14
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
Starting this month, this trend will only accelerate. Measure 57, which went into effect Jan. 1, lengthens sentences for repeat property and drug offenders. The more likely transgressors: women. Craig Prins, who heads the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission and serves on Kitzhaber’s committee, says no one realized it was happening until after the fact. “It really makes us think about, ‘What are we sending people to prison for?’” Prins says. “If we’re not thinking about these issues, we’re dealing with a stereotype in our minds, and the stereotype is not always what’s going on. If you say ‘ex-con’ or ‘criminal’ to someone, their mental image isn’t a woman. But that’s changing.” In Oregon, if you are a woman and sent to state prison, you go to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, which fully
LEAHNASH.COM
FRESH AIR: Inmates take a stroll outside, past the prison’s organic garden.
opened in 2002 and sits on 108 wooded acres outside of Wilsonville. Between 1,100 and 1,200 inmates are housed there, including one who waits on death row in a modified confinement cell. (See box, page 16.) In 2004, the population at Coffee Creek was smaller by 350. From the outside, Coffee Creek looks like a bland office park, except for the coils of barbed wire along the tops of the chain-link fences. Several low-slung buildings make up the campus, and in between it’s all parking lots, beige paint, big doors, sidewalks and manicured shrubs. It looks like a place where people might be doing your taxes. (In fact, about a dozen women are answering your DMV questions.) Inside, it feels more like a community college. Colorful posters hang on the walls. A yellow one offers ideas about parenting. A purple one lists ways to eat healthier.
In a cubicle in the fingerprinting room, a photo of Justin Bieber looks down. Classes include quilting, small-business ownership, barista training, cosmetology, parenting, GED classes, yoga and nutrition. An organic garden takes up most of the courtyard in the minimum-security complex. Soft, green shoots poke out of the tilled soil. The high ceilings create odd acoustics. Doors slide and slam so loud they disrupt regular conversation. A woman walks by with a brown paper sack; its crinkling sound carries for yards. Even smells are stronger. The odor of lemon-scented cleaner is overpowering. Rover and Omaha, two of the puppies in the service-dog training program who go everywhere with their inmate trainers, can be detected before
they come around a corner. In the cafeteria, inmates eat on trays like the ones in elementary school, divided into sections for different foods. They can have only a plastic spork utensil. Normal cutlery is banned. Interestingly, although they can’t have forks, they can have razors for shaving. Some female inmates sport heavy eyeliner and glossy lipstick, while others opt for no makeup at all. Every woman wears jeans and athletic sneakers. They wear dark blue T-shirts; some wear sweatshirts or jean jackets. If they’ve misbehaved and lost privileges, they wear neon green shirts. Inmates at Coffee Creek can’t touch each other. There CONT. on page 16 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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PLAYING DRESS-UP: Chalonda Ford straightens Natalie Donohoe’s hair. This is one of the few times when inmates are allowed to touch each other.
are three exceptions to this rule: when grieving (with permission), for congratulations (with permission) and when they braid each other’s hair at the beauty bar. Heidi Steward, one of three assistant superintendents at the facility, says a women’s prison presents different challenges than a men’s prison. Steward is tall, lanky and energetic, and wears a small nose stud. Along with Coffee Creek’s superintendent, Nancy Howton, she is among several women who run the prison, although a few men can be found in the administration. Steward, 37, has spent most of her career with the Department of Corrections. She’s prepared with pie charts and statistics, but she talks about Coffee Creek’s inmates with compassion. She knows as much about their before-prison lives as she does about their crimes. “A lot of the pathways that lead to prison are connected,” she says. “More women than men are victimized, and you just see them in a vicious cycle.”
According to DOC statistics, about a third of female prisoners have not completed high school. More strikingly, the vast majority are diagnosed at their medical evaluation as having mental-health issues. Sixty-four percent of the inmates at Coffee Creek have “serious and persistent mental health diagnoses,” such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and chronic depression, according to the DOC. And 89 percent of the inmate population entered prison addicted to drugs or alcohol. All of those numbers are higher for women in prison than for men. In fact, prison is the only sector of American society where women have earned lower levels of education on average than men. Jana Russell, the state administrator for behavioral health services, says this kind of population—disproportionately mentally ill, addicted and undereducated—is difficult and expensive to help. “We’re a prison, so the focus isn’t mental health care,” she says.
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THE WOMAN ON DEATH ROW One woman at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility waits on death row. Angela Darlene McAnulty, 43, was convicted in February 2011 of aggravated murder in Lane County Circuit Court after her 15-year-old daughter, Jeanette Maples, was found dead in their Eugene home shortly before Christmas 2009. Witnesses said McAnulty had beaten, starved and tortured her daughter while favoring her other children, a younger girl and boy. They said she kept Jeanette out of school and locked in a room where the girl slept on a piece of cardboard. Police said Jeanette was so emaciated and her growth so stunted when they found her body that they didn’t believe she was 15. McAnulty’s crime landed her in a modified solitary confinement cell at Coffee Creek. She can exercise and work, but must do it alone. She eats alone, but there are a few inmates with whom she plays cards and chats with behind a glass partition so she, according to Coffee Creek officials, can “preserve her social skills.” She is starting the appeals process on her death sentence. HANNAH HOFFMAN.
CONT.
JAIL BIRDS
But Russell says it should be more so at Coffee Creek, where the prison staff has learned to pay attention to inmates’ mental health. Being in prison can cause some women to show signs of mental illness for the first time. “If you’re on the edge, this may push you over,” Russell says. “Or where they were masking symptoms with drugs or alcohol, we begin to actually see the symptoms.” Last year, 52 inmates at Coffee Creek tried to kill themselves. One succeeded. Among the entire population at Oregon’s 12 male prisons—which comprises about 13,000 inmates—72 tried to kill themselves in 2011. That’s about 5.5 attempts per 1,000 inmates—one-tenth as many as the women. Running a female prison has costs that male prisons don’t have. Coffee Creek has to pay for more mental health medication, according to Russell. Inmates also need counseling for those problems. Steward says women require more time with caseworkers and counselors. Coffee Creek has one counselor per 150 inmates. Two Rivers Correctional Institution, a similar men’s prison in Umatilla, has one for every 300 inmates. “Males function in a hierarchical structure, but women are communicative,” Russell says. “We want to talk and we need to
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“IF YOU’RE ON THE EDGE, THIS MAY PUSH YOU OVER.”—JANA RUSSELL, STATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICES talk. Women share every aspect of their lives. Men keep secrets.” Violence is less a way of life in a women’s prison (although the DOC says Coffee Creek inmates did something violent almost every other day in 2011), but sex plays a large role. Rape and sexual assault are not common at Coffee Creek, but sexual liaisons are—even though consensual sex is forbidden. According to DOC statistics, inmates at Coffee Creek had nearly three times as many unpermitted but consensual sexual acts as their male counterparts at Two Rivers did in 2011. “Women have the need to be close to somebody,” Steward says. “It’s not uncommon for our women to have girlfriends.” She says the relationships often lead to fights—breakups and jealousy hurt in prison, too. But because Coffee Creek is the only women’s prison in the state, it’s a problem. “If there’s a conflict in a male facility, we can separate them by sending one of them somewhere else,” Steward says. “But with Coffee Creek, there’s no way to move them elsewhere.” Females are still a small minority in Oregon’s prison population—8 percent. But it’s the fastest-growing group in the penal system. Why? It’s not, despite what many believe, because of Measure 11, the 1994 citizens’ initiative that voters passed to establish mandatory minimum sentences for violent crimes. Instead, it’s because the Oregon Legislature passed a number of laws over the past 15 years focusing on nonviolent crimes. In 1996, the Legislature passed a bill that sent repeat property offenders to prison. Prior to 1996, repeat property offenders were typically given probation. In 1999, the Legislature passed a bill that included “identity theft” as a property crime. Identity theft was only becoming an issue at the time, but within a few years, thanks to the growth of the Internet and availability of credit cards, it became a frequent crime. In 2001, the Legislature created a broader definition of “repeat offenders” for property crimes, resulting in more people being sent to prison rather than placed on probation. Because women commit property crimes at very high rates compared to other crimes, those changes created a spike in the number of women going to prison. According to Department of Corrections data, roughly the same number of women commit felony property crimes every year, but during the past decade, more have gone to prison for them. Only 6.5 percent of women convicted of felony property crimes in 2000 went to prison. But in 2011, 18.6 percent of them did. (That’s slightly lower than the peak of 21.7 percent in 2010.) CONT. on page 18 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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JAIL BIRDS
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Eric Mellgren, a retired Medford police chief and Southern Oregon University criminology professor, says ID theft goes hand-in-hand with meth addition, and it’s popular with women because it’s a relatively safe crime. “There is very little physical risk,” he says. “You’re not going to get attacked by a large dog or get shot by a homeowner. Women might tend to do [ID theft] rather than commit a violent crime.” It’s also lucrative. “One good ID thief can steal as much online as all the burglars and robbers in Medford in a year,” Mellgren says. Oregon isn’t alone in this trend. Susan Phillips, a research analyst with the Sentencing Project—a national research and advocacy group—says putting more women in prison for property crimes is a national trend. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of women in prisons nationwide has increased 400 percent since 1985, double the growth rate for men. “You’re not leading the country in this by any means,” Phillips says. “[Oregon] isn’t the craziest state in these things by far.” But the feminization of this country’s prison system is unique. The United States imprisons more women per capita and more women as a proportion of all inmates than any other major developed country in the world, according to data collected by the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Kevin Mannix is a former state representative and ex-chair of Oregon’s Republican Party. He has run unsuccessfully for governor, attorney general and Congress, but he is best known as the father of Measure 11, the aforementioned initiative that put more violent criminals behind bars. He is also the reason why, in 2012, the number of women entering prison is expected to grow, creating concerns at Coffee Creek, which has room for about only 100 more inmates. Four years ago, Mannix gathered enough signatures to put Measure 61 on the ballot, which sought to create mandatory minimum sentences not for violent offenders, but for repeat property and drug offenders. The Oregon Legislature was so concerned about the consequences of Mannix’s measure—namely, building more prisons—that it referred to voters a competing measure that also
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JANUARY 20 - 22, 2012
Fri 5:30 - 9:30pm (21+) Sat 11am - 6pm Sun 11am - 5pm At the Oregon Convention Center www.chocolatefest.org
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Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
BARE HALLS: The hallways at Coffee Creek stay empty and spotlessly clean.
JAIL BIRDS LEAHNASH.COM
CONT.
AN INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE
HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR! THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON January 23, 2012
STUDY TIME: Inmates take a range of classes at Coffee Creek. Parenting, a 12-week class for incarcerated parents, is popular.
established minimum sentences for nonviolent crimes but wasn’t so tough as Mannix’s measure. Measure 57, the alternative to Mannix’s 61, passed in November 2008 but only went into effect this January. Until the start of 2012, an ID-theft conviction would earn someone at least 13 months in prison. Now, ID theft carries a minimum sentence of 18 months. Mannix says he never considered how his ideas would impact women. “It did not come up,” he concedes. But he says prison could be good for some women: “There could be a chance to change someone’s life by pulling them out of the corrosive environment they were part of.” Sen. Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene), one of two Democrats who sponsored House Bill 3057 in 1999—making identity theft a property crime that could carry a prison sentence—says no one thought about gender at the time. “I don’t remember us having any data in front of us as to the impact on either gender,” he says. “I think anyone who has been a victim of identity theft wants anyone who is committing those offenses to be held accountable, whether they’re men or women.” For all the issues that accompany female inmates—mental illness, razors, relationship needs, sanitary pads—the most profound is motherhood. More than 75 percent of the inmates at Coffee Creek have children, and some are pregnant when they enter the prison. Inmates had 16 babies last year, down from 21 in 2010. This creates indirect costs for the state: foster care. Most children live with their mothers, so they must go somewhere when their moms go to prison. Gene Evans, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Human Services, says it costs the state about $2,000 per month to have a child in foster care. The average stay is about 15 months, which means each stay costs taxpayers about $30,000—the same as one year in prison. Among Dawn Pearson’s four children, one of them lives in a foster home. Frankie, 16, looks like a smaller version of her mother, with tomato-red fingernails and a big gray sweatshirt whose cuffs she pulls over her hands. Frankie is an expensive teenager. She has drug and anger problems and requires a drug support
group, lawyer, regular urinalysis tests, special classes at school and a caseworker—all paid for by taxpayers. If this is an argument for keeping women out of prison, Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Michael McShane doesn’t buy it, particularly for longtime meth addicts. He says sometimes motherhood can keep a woman out of prison. DHS pays for mothers to go through drug treatment, so judges sometimes allow women who are unlikely to reoffend to stay on probation and go to rehab. Often, however, meth trumps motherhood. McShane says he has seen women addicted to meth starve and neglect their children, but then insist they stole credit cards to feed them. “No,” he says. “You were buying meth.” In Dawn Pearson’s case, she stole the credit card of her daughter’s principal only 18 months after ending her first, five-year stay at Coffee Creek for identity theft and meth offenses. After she got out, she began using drugs again. That’s the reality of Coffee Creek. Women are likely to reoffend because their crimes are so connected to their addictions, and for many of them, probation doesn’t work. “Usually if we’re looking at sending women to prison, they’ve burned through the programs here,” McShane says. He opposes mandatory minimum sentences and would like to preserve more judicial discretion. But he says many of these women need to go to prison. “Sometimes we’re worried that a person’s going to kill themselves if we don’t send them to prison,” he says. McShane says prison is often the only way to get addicts into drug treatment, which is the only way to make them stop offending. He says that’s largely because local drug treatment programs have been cut and also because addicts are required to get treatment in prison. He says they need to spend at least two years in prison to make real progress. Though it’s controversial to say, McShane maintains that a woman who simply will not stop breaking the law, to whom drugs have become more important than her children, the choice is clear—Coffee Creek. “If they’re there,” he says, “it’s because no one trusts they can be let out in the community.”
Saturday January 28th
Lion Dancers 11, 12 & 1 Fubonn Shopping Center
F S Y D FREE Reusable Fubonn grocery bag with purchase of $25 Fubonn Supermarket gift card.
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2850 S.E. 82nd Ave.
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PET LOVE Declare your love for your pet with a FREE PET VALENTINE in Willamette Week. To show your Pet Love, go to wweek.com/petlove
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DEMOCRACY | FEBRUARY 1, 2012
See her work at velvetjuanita.blogspot.com
CHRISTOPHER PHILLIPS
Deadline for submissions: Noon, Friday, February 3.
author, deliberative democracy specialist
JOBS | FEBRUARY 24, 2012
for a full schedule visit www.MiKethrasherpresents.coM follow us online at: facebooK.coM/MiKethrasherpresents twitter.coM/MiKethrasherpdX · www.Myspace.coM/MiKethrasherpresents
JULIET SCHOR author, economist
EDUCATION | MARCH 20, 2012
DIANE RAVITCH author, education historian
HEALTH CARE | APRIL 18, 2012
WENDELL POTTER author, media analyst
REGIONAL EXPERTS | MAY 9, 2012
NATIONAL DEFENSE special illahee panel discussion
wednesday april 4 arlene schnitzer concert hall
1037 SW BroadWay · Portland, or 7:00Pm doorS · all ageS Full Bar With ProPer id ticketS at all ticketmaSter locationS charge By Phone 1-800-745-3000
Special Event: National Defense
WEDNESDAY: MAY 16, 2012
ANDREW BACEVICH The Oregon Humanities Center 2011-12 Kritikos Lecture in the Humanities free and open to the public
on sale
Fri
10:00aM 800-745-3000
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FOR TICKETS | INFORMATION:
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GOSSIP THAT’S GOT ITS SNOW CHAINS ON. DANIEL HALL
This lovely new album from singer-songwriter Edwards was produced by Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) who also provides vocals on several tracks.
OUT NOW:
SCOOP
Lunch • Dinner Weekend Breakfasts
KATHLEEN EDWARDS S
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WHO KIDNAPPED ROGER RABBIT?: More than a week after 18 rabbits were stolen from a Portland Meat Collective instructor’s backyard, negotiations continue for the return of the 18th bunny, a breeder named Roger, to farmer Levi Cole. A source tells Willamette Week the woman holding Roger has hired defense attorney Lisa Ludwig and is trying to negotiate “joint custody and visitation rights for the rabbit.” The rabbitnapping has become a flashpoint for hostilities between Portland’s DIY butchers and its animal-rights activists. “Judas,” screamed a headline on local blog the Vegan Police after a group called Rabbit Advocates returned 17 of the animals on Friday, Jan. 13. “Rabbits occupy a weird space in terms to their social construction of worth—i.e. speciesism—in that they are common pets, but are also commonly eaten for their flesh,” the Vegan Police wrote. NEXT OUT: Portland wasn’t without a free LGBT publication for long. The last issue of Just Out published in December; the first issue of PQ Monthly is due in February. According to The Advocate, Melanie Davis, publisher-owner of El Hispanic News, will celebrate the new venture with a launch party at the Jupiter Hotel. Like its predecessor, it’ll be free. “My personal commitment, and the commitment from the team, is that every letter and color in the LGBTQ community is equally represented,” she told the publication. SCHOLLS SEATING: Apizza Scholls has signed a contract to use the OpenTable reservation service, according to the blogosphere. There’s also some buzz about the restaurant starting to serve lunch, which would presumably mean short midday lines for impatient pizza lovers, but no confirmation yet. WE READ THE PORTLANDIA PRESS SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO: A week after the East Coast noticed the existence of Portlandia with a series of obligingly on-message Carrie Brownstein profiles, Slate advanced the conversation with dueling thumbsuckers by people who at one time lived in the Pacific Northwest, but now do not. “Like bigger, stronger, cooler siblings everywhere, Seattle doesn’t worry too much about Portland,” wrote June Thomas, who at one time lived in Seattle, but now does not. (If this seems like a strange thing for Thomas to declare all of a sudden, it was.) Then the response: “Portland is being lavished with attention…precisely because it is small enough to keep a certain brand of distinctness alive—even as all this attention risks the whole enterprise,” wrote Seth Colter Walls, who at one time lived in Portland, but now does not. The great thing about this exchange is that both Thomas and Colter Walls now live in New York City, so they could have had this conversation in person, but instead got paid to have it online!
PAU L D OW N E Y
NEW YEAR NEW MUSIC
HEADOUT OWEN CAREY
WILLAMETTE WEEK
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
THURSDAY JAN. 19 DR. DEMENTO [MUSIC] As Reedies go, you could have a sincere debate about whether Steve Jobs or Dr. Demento has had a larger influence on the music biz. Jobs, of course, revolutionized the medium. Dr. Demento, in turn, ruled as the king of the parody radio show that gave us “Weird Al” Yankovic and “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” His lecture-and-spin series at Reed College features the songs the Beatles grew up with on Thursday, a century of protest songs on Friday and his greatest hits on Saturday. Vollum Lecture Hall, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., 771-1112, reed. edu. 8 pm each day. $5.
FRIDAY JAN. 20 BLACK ELK [MUSIC] Black Elk-related news items have been in short supply these past couple of years, so the sludge-metal quartet’s return to its hometown, along with a fancy new rhythm section, seems as good an excuse as any to remind the world that the band still exists and is totally effing rad. Branx, 320 SE 2nd Ave., 234-5683, 9:30 pm. Free. All ages. SHACKLETON’S ANTARCTIC NIGHTMARE Lawrence Howard revives his solo performance about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition to the southern extremes. Hipbone Studio, 1847 E Burnside St., portlandstorytheater.com. 8 pm FridaysSaturdays through Jan. 28. $15-$20.
SATURDAY JAN. 21 AN EVENING WITH JOANNA PRIESTLEY [MOVIES] She ranks among Portland’s best animators. She has new movies. At least one is about the (former) planet Pluto. She’ll be there. It’s winter. What else are you doing? Watch the stars! Maybe they’re not stars. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium, 1219 SW Park Ave., 221-1156. 7 pm. $6-$9.
MONDAY JAN. 23 (I AM STILL) THE DUCHESS OF MALFI
THE FERTILE GROUND FESTIVAL GETS DARK. Murder, conspiracy and apocalypse! No, it’s not the latest Ron Paul slogan. As grim as the farcical presidential race has become, it has nothing on some of the bloody, unsettling and bizarre plays premiering at this year’s Fertile Ground Festival. The city-wide, uncurated celebration of new work by local artists, now in its
fourth year, will bring more than 100 performances and readings to very nearly every theater in town over 10 days, and the mood is dark. There’s political intrigue (The North Plan, They), supernatural terror (Ablaze, Bite Me a Little), gore ([I Am Still] the Duchess of Malfi, Grand Guignol 4) and rumblings of doomsday (Waxwing, B’aktun 13). So get out there and take in a little light entertainment—that is, if you’ve got the guts. BEN WATERHOUSE.
GO: Fertile Ground events at various venues Jan. 19-29. See Performance, page 41, for full listings and reviews. Individual admissions vary, all-festival passes $50 at fertilegroundpdx.org.
SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS AT NIGHT [MOVIES] It hardly seems possible this has not happened in Portland previously, but it hasn’t. Here are Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Thundarr the Barbarian and Schoolhouse Rock, all together on a big screen with beer. Hey, hey, hey. Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 281-4215. 7:30 pm. $5. Free cereal for early arrivals.
TUESDAY JAN. 24 CONCRETE BLONDE [MUSIC] If the recent release of the 2012 Coachella lineup weren’t indication enough that the ’90s are back in full force, how about the resurrection of Concrete Blonde? A new self-released, two-song 7-inch finds the group brandishing its same old desert-baked and punk spirit. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave., 248-4700. 9 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. 21+. Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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UPCOMING IN-STORE PERFORMANCES TONIGHT! – JACKSTRAW – WEDNESDAY 1/18 @ 6PM
FOOD & DRINK = WW Pick. Highly recommended. By RUTH BROWN. PRICES: $: Most entrees under $10. $$: $10-$20. $$$: $20-$30. $$$$: Above $30. Editor: MARTIN CIZMAR. Email: dish@wweek.com. See page 3 for submission instructions.
FRIDAY, JAN. 20
DEVOUR
Breakside Brewery at Aquariva RAGS & RIBBONS
NAOMI LAVIOLETTE
Rags & Ribbons play melodic rock anthems driven by classically-inspired piano. Progressive and post-rock influences by way of Queen, Muse, Arcade Fire and Sigur Ros color these intricate pop songs, expressing desire, yearning, regret and joy like only pop can. ‘The Glass Masses’ is a debut album of elaborately structured songs with rich harmonies and dramatic hooks.
Naomi LaViolette, songwriter, pianist, and vocalist, has found an acoustic niche between the worlds of folk singer-songwriters and jazz soulstresses. Her music takes two parts Sarah MacLachlan, one part Joni Mitchell, and adds a dash of Madeleine Peyroux’s understated elegance for a concoction that is extremely palatable, sweet, and soulful. LaViolette’s self-titled debut album features 10 original songs, as well her own arrangements of George Gershwin’s “Our Love Is Here to Stay” and Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”.
THURSDAY 1/19 @ 6PM
SUNDAY 1/22 @ 3PM
Northeast Portland’s Breakside Brewery has been doing a really neat project where it teamed up with 12 Portland chefs to create signature beers for their restaurants. This month, Aquariva (whose chef Andy Arndt left at the start of the year, but was responsible for the collaboration), is holding a fourcourse pairing dinner to toast their brew, Italian Amber: “a sessionable, malty red ale and blended in two small batches of the same beer fermented, respectively, with bay leaf and savory.” Other Breakside beverages, including the Aztec and Hoppy Amber, will also be served. Aquariva, 0470 SW Hamilton Court, 802-5850. 6 pm. $45. 21+.
Fresco Chocolate at Cacao
MARK LANEGAN LISTENING PARTY MONDAY 1/23 @ 6PM
‘Blues Funeral,’ out 2/7/12, is the new Mark Lanegan Band record and the first since 2004’s ‘Bubblegum.’ It was recorded in Hollywood, California by Alain Johannes and features guest appearances from the likes of Josh Homme, Greg Dulli and Jack Irons. Music Millennium will play one of the ‘Blues Funeral’ vinyl test pressings on January 23rd at 6PM. At the conclusion of the party, one lucky customer will win that test pressing to take home with them! In addition, anyone who preorders the album will get a 7” single of “The Gravedigger’s Song” signed by Mark Lanegan (while supplies last).
SUNBEARS!
WEDNESDAY 1/25 @ 6PM On first listen, ‘You Will Live Forever,’ the debut full-length album from Sunbears! fools you. On the whole, each of the thirteen songs morph into a heart-achingly beautiful psychedelic rock opus - tantalizing your ears and soul. Lush harmonies play alongside striking orchestral arrangements, creating an epically huge sound from what must be an epically huge band. But surprise, Sunbears! are a duo.
Chocolate maker Rob Anderson of Washington-based bean-to-bar chocolate maker Fresco will be visiting Cacao to show off his single-origin Chuao chocolate bars. Chuao cocoa is considered some of the finest in the world, so naturally it’s freaking expensive, which makes this free tasting pretty sweet. (Incidentally, the bars are either 70 percent or 76 percent cacao, so not literally particularly sweet.) Cacao, 414 SW 13th Ave., 241-0656. 4-6 pm. Free.
SATURDAY, JAN. 21 Bar Camp at Lincoln
WINE BLOWOUT!
Lincoln restaurant’s Bar Camp cocktail class returns. Learn the nittygritty of cocktail history, liquor production, stocking a bar and yes, making drinks. The “camp” (don’t worry, you can go home at the end of the night) wraps up with a meal and cocktail pairings. Lincoln, 3808 N Williams Ave., 288-6200. 4:30 pm. $125, including dinner.
Red Ridge Farms at Salt and Straw
Alberta scoop shop Salt and Straw’s “meet the producer” series continues with the folks from Dayton’s Red Ridge Farms olive oil, whose tasty olive nectar is featured in the ice creamery’s new Arbequina Olive Oil flavor. The free session promises an “olive oil sensory tasting” and, presumably, ice cream. Salt and Straw, 2035 NE Alberta St., 2083867. 1 pm. Free.
SUNDAY, JAN. 22 Plate and Pitchfork’s 10th Birthday Party
30 – 50% OFF
THE ORIGINAL RETAIL PRICE
OF SOME OF THE TOP FRENCH & ITALAN WINES AVAILABLE IN OREGON!
One of our distributors is going out of business. We’ve culled their lists to bring you terrific bargains.
Blowout Sale begins Friday at 2 Tastings at 6:30 Sale ends Saturday at 6 We say: A good deal on bad wine is not a good deal. This is a good deal on great wine.
E&R WINE SHOP 6141 S.W. MACADAM | 503.246.6101 | WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/ERWINESHOP
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Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
Dinner series Plate and Pitchfork, which brings diners literally to the farm their meal is coming from to eat it, is turning 10. To celebrate, it’s throwing a party—sadly, not with a day of laser tag and a sleepover, like my 10th birthday, but at a winery with cocktails from Bull Run Distillery and sweet treats from St. Jack, the Sugar Cube food cart and the best chocolate bar in the universe, Bees and Beans. Grochau Cellars, 2621 NW 30th, 522-2455. 2-5 pm. $30. 21+.
Pacific Pie Company’s National Pie Day Pie Contest
As the truly pie-ous will surely be aware, the most holy of holy days, National Pie Day, will soon be upon us. To celebrate, Portlandvia-Australia pie shop Pacific Pie Co. will be hosting a pie-making contest. Both sweet and savory pies will be accepted (bring ‘em to the store at 1 pm), with the winning recipe in each category making it onto the PPC menu for the month of February. Let’s get ready to cruuuuumble! Pacific Pie Company, 1520 SE 7th Ave., 3816157. 1 pm. Free.
BURNING DOWN THE MOUTH Yeah, yeah, you love Secret Aardvark. We know. But there’s a whole grocery shelf of locally made hot sauces out there just waiting to burn your face off. We put five to a blind taste test using crackers and cukes. RUTH BROWN.
THAI AND TRUE SARACHEE HOT SAUCE 9 ounces “It’s not very hot, but it’s sweet and really good.” “I would eat this on just about anything.” “It’s like someone combined sriracha and some of that Thai chicken sauce and combined them.” Use it on: Hot wings, rice, noodles.
NW ELIXIRS #1 HOTT SAUCE 9 ounces “Watery, watery, watery.” “A whole lotta clove. It’s really off-putting.” “It tastes like chai. I feel like I’m in Townshend’s tea shop right now.” Use it on: You got us.
FLAMEBOY XXX HOT SAUCE 7 ounces “Way too vinegary for my tastes.” “It’s super smoky.” “It’s a real back-of-the-throat burn.” Use it on: Eggs, pulled pork.
PORTLAND PEPPER SAUCE RED PEPPER SAUCE 5 ounces “I want to know if that’s artificial color, it’s an amazing color.” “It’s good, kinda sweet.” “This would be a great cocktail hot sauce, or if you’re just looking for something to keep on your table because you’re a capsaicin addict.” Use it on: Bloody marys.
SECRET AARDVARK HABANERO HOT SAUCE 10.5 ounces “Thick!” “I think this has a depth of flavor the others don’t.” “My face hurts.” Use it on: Pizza. BEST: The overall favorite was Thai and True. Though not exactly a traditional hot sauce, most agreed they would happily use it in place of one. For a more everyday condiment, Portland Pepper Sauce also had some strong supporters. HOTTEST: Flameboy. BEST BOTTLE: Flameboy’s hip-flask shape and retro label was a standout, with all agreeing it was the sauce they would most likely give as a gift for that reason. For practicality, the squeeze bottles and thin spouts of Thai and True and Secret Aardvark came up trump.
DRANK
CIDER WIT (FLAT TAIL BREWING)
At first glance, it’s a run-of-the-mill wit. Belgian-style witbiers, or wheat beers, are commonly spiced with coriander and orange peel. But this one is more complex. The aroma is funky, both in the yeast and oddball sense, belying the real star of this beer: local pinot noir barrels. The spent barrels landed in the hands of Corvallisbased 2 Towns Ciderhouse for a cider sweetened with wort—unfermented beer—from neighboring Flat Tail Brewing. Now, having aged the beer in this repurposed cask, the result is an intriguing taste of all of the above plus pressed apples. Far sweeter and less carbonated than standard wits, it could benefit from a touch more hops or a dash of another Belgian yeast strain to dry it out a bit. But it’s a valiant experiment nonetheless. Looking for something akin to the menudo of fermented beverages? Give this a try. But if Flat Tail sought to design something as enjoyable as several glasses of the best pinot noirs, dry ciders and Belgian wits, they must crush this experiment and concoct another mashup. BRIAN YAEGER.
FOOD & DRINK AMAREN COLOSI
REVIEW
BOOKs PAGE 45
Shandong cuisine of northern china
UMBRELLA DRINKS: Adam Ho makes the sweet and spicy team dac biet cocktail at Luc Lac.
fresh ingredients • prepared daily • a new look at classic dishes open daily 11-2:30 lunch 4-9:30 dinner happy hour specials 4-6
3724 ne broadway portland or 97232 503.287.0331 shandongportland.com
NOW SERVING BRUNCH. Along with our regular menu
All you can eat buffet. 10am – 5pm Sundays • Pork Rojo SPARAGUS • Grilled Asparagus F YA • Tamales • Empanadas 40 • Cottage Cheese Varieties Taste the of Gourmet Difference • Enchilada Roja Tamales • Enchilada Verde CASA DE • Fruit Cocktail A R LE • Mexican Sweet Bread S R E S TAU
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• Beans • Rice • Potatoes • Huevos a la Mexicana • Chicken Verde • Chile Rellenos • Beef Rojo
M TA
feels homey and familiar. That’s because thirdgeneration restaurant owner Adam Ho ran the cramped Pho PDX in the space next door to Luc Lac for years, gathering lunch and late-night service industry devotees to his mom’s Viet BY K E L LY C L A R K E 24 3 - 2 1 2 2 recipes along the way. Although Pho PDX was a favorite pit stop At Luc Lac you don’t just eat the pho—you drink for vegetarian pho ($6.50), everything Luc Lac does involving beef is great, too. The delicate, it. And it’s damn good. Adam Ho, co-owner and bar manager at the aromatic beef noodle pho is packed with tennewish downtown restaurant, mixes bourbon, der round steak and brisket ($6.50, more for cranberry juice and a little pear cider with a syrup tendon and tripe if you must), and the little spiked with the Vietnamese beef noodle soup’s grilled la lot ($4), which wrap herby minced trademark spices, from ginger to star anise. That beef in peppery betel leaves, taste like rich, makes for a dangerously drinkable sweet and meaty Vietnamese dolmas. Don’t leave without trying the excellent bo tai spicy cocktail called team dac chanh salad ($7), which “cooks” biet ($8). “I actually first made steak in citrus juice and tosses [the syrup] for a mint julep Order this: Bo tai chanh salad, la lot, grilled pork banh mi, team it with a super-fresh tangle of contest. It’s an Asian secret,” dac biet cocktail. says Ho, refusing to divulge the Best deal: You can eat nearly half herbs, onions, pineapple sauce recipe. “It originally had beef in of the menu, from mussels in Thai and peanuts. broth to coconut prawns and la Food portions and flavors are it, too…not anymore.” lot for $2 a plate at happy hour big. The banh mi costs $7, but A slight, dapper man always (4-7 pm Monday-Saturday). This comes deli-style with a salad sporting black-frame glasses and is a righteously ridiculous deal. pass: The beefy Luc Lac plate and a bunch of shrimp chips. a crisp white shirt, Ho has a flair I’ll ($15), which stir fries steak with The sandwich meats, especially for highlighting Southeast Asian Hennessey, garlic and black pepthe charred lemongrass-marcuisine’s traditional sweet, sour percorns, is good, but the kitchen’s Viet and Thai standards are inated pork and funky-sweet and bitter combinations in craft cheaper and even better. nuong pork barbecue sausage, cocktails. He mates sugary Vietare of good quality and very namese coffee to strong, minty branca menta and tarts up a cardamom-scented tasty. You can get either protein as part of a avocado shake with Grand Marnier and chewy huge vermicelli rice bowl brimming with vegtapioca bubbles (both $10). That last one looks gies, shrimp and crunchy pork and taro rolls, like a douchebag tropical-cruise drink and tastes too ($7-$10). Although the new space is sleeker and sexier like creamy tea heaven. The decor at Ho’s and his brother Alan’s new than Pho PDX, it’s got some quirks. You order at haunt is as delightfully baroque as its drink ingre- the bar, regardless of the meal, which can lead to dients. A horseshoe of tall-backed, red-leather a traffic jam of would-be pho slurpers between banquettes surround a huge oval-shaped wood the front door and the cash register during the bar painted bright teal. One entire wall is devoted lunch rush. Service can be slow. But between the to a stunning, graffiti-ish mural of capering Chi- brothers’ intense, spicy plates, warm demeanor nese dragon heads while a flock of pink parasols and inventive drinks, Luc Lac is a beauty inside hang from the high ceiling. It’s a fun, fabulous and out already. place to eat and drink, like a long lost Asian set EAT: Luc Lac Vietnamese Kitchen, 835 SW 2nd piece from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Ave., 222-0047, luclackitchen.com. 11 am-2:30 Despite the wild design flourishes and a 4 am pm Monday-Friday, 4 pm-midnight Mondayclosing time on Friday and Saturday, the joint Thursday, 4 pm-4 am Friday-Saturday. $-$$.
AN T
PHO PDX GETS A CHIC, BOOZY OVERHAUL AT LUC LAC VIETNAMESE KITCHEN.
CAN B
MAKE ME OVER
Only $13. Unbelievable! 503.654.4423 • 10605 SE Main St. Milwaukie, OR www.CanbyAsparagusFarm.com
Delivery & Shipping Available
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
ADVERTORIAL ANIMALS
ARTS
COMMUNITY
EDUCATION
ENVIRONMENT
SOCIAL ACTION
WELLNESS
YOUTH
Willamette Week’s
a glance we need help with general office duties, outreach/education, phones, clinics and cleaning!
Readers —
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: The Feral Cat
Welcome to our first-ever Volunteer Guide. The idea here goes something like this: You were generous financially with WW’s 2011 Give!Guide. Now, as the new year begins, you may want to invest some of your valuable sweat equity in a local nonprofit, but you’re not sure where to start. If so, we’re here to help. Fifty or so worthy nonprofits have identified their needs in the pages of this guide. If you can fill one of them, terrific! If you know someone else who can, point that person in the right direction. Thanks for giving this your attention.
ANIMALS ANIMAL AID WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Caregivers
to help create a clean and safe environment for cats living in the shelter. Adoption counselors to work with the public through the adoption process. Foster homes for dogs and cats as they wait for their “fur”-ever homes. See website for additional opportunities: animalaidpdx.org. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Caregiver: age
16+, available for 9-11 am or 4-6 pm shifts, 3-month commitment. Adoption counselor: age 21+, available for Saturday noon-4 pm shifts, 6-month commitment. Foster home: all kinds! See website and application for details. CONTACT: Volunteer coordinator, volunteer.coordinator@ animalaidpdx.org, 292-6628
CAT ADOPTION TEAM WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: As a CAT
volunteer, make purr-fect matches as an adoption counselor, foster a litter of kittens, represent CAT at a community event, cuddle with shelter cats, provide daily care, hand out food at the Cat Food Bank, take photos, write about cats, host a food drive, and greet and assist clients all while having a purr-tastic time and getting paid in head-butts and purrs! IDEAL VOLUNTEER: If you love talking
about cats, caring for cats, and helping others fall in love with cats, we need you. CONTACT: Nancy Puro, volunteer manager, nancyp@catadoptionteam.org, 925-8903, ext. 258
FERAL CAT COALITION OF OREGON WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We have
a variety of volunteer positions; at
Coalition of Oregon is a volunteerbased animal welfare organization. We are looking for dedicated people with a desire to help make a difference. You must be able to work well with other people as well as animals. Must be able to commit to scheduled volunteer shifts. CONTACT: Caitlin Traxler,
volunteer@feralcats.com
ARTS HOLLYWOOD THEATRE WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: The
Hollywood Theatre is one of Portland’s leading arts nonprofits whose mission is to entertain, inspire, educate and connect the community through the art of film while preserving a historic Portland landmark. To meet these ends, we are always on the lookout for talented and dedicated individuals to assist in all areas of operations including, but not limited to: office work (during daytime business hours), outreach and advocacy, event planning and fundraising, marketing/collateral design, building maintenance and, most important, theater operations. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Ideal volunteers are
new members and visitors to our space, and help represent us in the community through tabling at art and publication fairs and events. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer
is someone with a DIY spirit and a desire to assist others in achieving their printing and publishing needs. Individuals with experience in making their own zines or books is a plus. CONTACT: Michael D’Alessandro, community resource coordinator, michael@iprc.org
PDX POP NOW! WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: An all-
volunteer organization, PDX Pop Now! owes its success to the many individuals who have generously and enthusiastically donated their time. Areas for involvement include administration, development, finance, art, marketing or events. Specific positions include: festival event staff, compilation-selection listeners, grant-writers, fundraising & sponsorship coordinators, finance coordinators, merchandise coordinators IDEAL VOLUNTEER: A self-motivated
professional with a passion for music and learning who understands how to communicate thoughtfully while also managing his/her limited time efficiently. The desire to analyze any issue from a leadership prospective and personal commitment to proactively improving some aspect(s) of the organization.
smart, creative lovers of story and film who aren’t afraid to think big and question long-held assumptions. Special points for being a team player with a big heart and a great sense of humor.
CONTACT: Lisa Pfaffinger,
CONTACT: Justen,
VIBE OF PORTLAND
justen@hollywoodtheatre.org
INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING RESOURCE CENTER (IPRC) WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We are
a resource for those interested in publishing their own artwork, zines, books, websites and comics. We need volunteers to staff our open hours, help out with creative projects around the Center, greet and orient
volunteer coordinator, volunteer@pdxpopnow.com
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Vibe
is looking for interns to help in our programming and marketing departments. Interns would be responsible for various administrative tasks ranging from buying art supplies, to designing and distributing all marketing, to coordinating with teachers, school sites and director. Great experience to work with a small but growing nonprofit.
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Strong writing
ability, initiative to carry out projects, creative problem-solving ability, basic design skills, including experience with Photoshop and Illustrator, devotion to and belief in Vibe’s mission and vision. Ideally intern has their own transportation to visit after-school sites and deliver supplies as needed. CONTACT: Laura Streib, info@vibeofportland.com
WRITE AROUND PORTLAND WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Leading
creative writing workshops, producing our three annual books, staffing readings, running events and helping with myriad tasks from copy-editing to hosting house parties, from typing poems to sending mailings, from outreach activities to photography...everything that makes our writing workshops, community readings and professionally designed books possible. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Volunteers share
our commitment to respect, writing and community. They are passionate about our mission to bring workshops to hospitals, schools, prisons, treatment centers and housing facilities. They love being part of an organization where everyone pitches in and every job, whether making copies or facilitating workshops, makes a difference. CONTACT: writearound.org, volunteer@writearound.org, 796-9224
COMMUNITY AMERICAN RED CROSS WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: American
Red Cross volunteers save and rebuild lives by providing assistance to disaster victims, supporting blood drives and delivering community education. If you are looking for a fast-paced, challenging volunteer position, we need your help in the Portland area. Join us and experience CONT. on page 28
Willamette Week’s Volunteer Guide JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
27
advertorial
the greatness of the human spirit at its best. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Red Cross
volunteers have a passion to serve the people in their communities by giving time, blood and money. They are self-motivated, collaborative, compassionate and committed to delivering our mission of saving and rebuilding lives in Oregon. CONTACT: redcross.org/volunteer,
PNWInfo@usa.redcross.org, 284-1234
Community Vision Inc. WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Community
Vision provides individualized support for men and women with developmental disabilities. Volunteers work one-on-one with participants around town, or just in their homes and neighborhoods; support home remodeling and gardening to improve participants’ access and quality of life; and kick our annual Harvest Century ride into gear. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: We are looking for
folks who are excited to see beyond diagnoses and disabilities, and eager to build a more inclusive community. While individualized support is most effective through long-term partnerships, there are plenty of drop-in opportunities—alone or with a community group- at gardening and remodeling projects and events. CONTACT: Emily Saxton,
esaxton@cvision.org
Harper’s Playground WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We need help
writing grant proposals, designing event posters, hosting bake sales and generally anything anyone is willing to do to help us. We are an all-volunteer organization, so you let us know what you are good at or interested in doing, and we’ll find a place for you. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer
is smart, funny and rich beyond their wildest dreams. A passion for play and equality are also very nice. CONTACT: Cody Goldberg,
info@harpersplayground.org
Impact NW WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Helping low-
income families transition into selfsufficiency: mentoring at-risk youth, leading activities at our transitional housing facility, or visiting homebound seniors. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Connected to our
mission; interested in working with diverse groups of people; excited to share their unique skills with us.
literature. We need help with zine and library coordination, artist/ craft consignment, volunteer coordination, IT, community engagement, events programming, communications, fundraising, art curation, personnel/HR, inventory/ store coordination, front desk shifts, and board of directors. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: The ideal In Other
Words volunteer has a glass-half-full attitude, is flexible, proactive, friendly, passionate, creative, motivated, consistent, has an interest in social justice, is a self-starter and/or has an interest in developing leadership skills, enjoys teamwork, and values a space that embraces a diversity of feminist perspectives. CONTACT: volunteer@inotherwords.org
Macdonald Center WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Volunteers
help us foster the sacredness and dignity of all individuals and build community by breaking down social isolation. In our Visiting Program, teams of two go out to visit residents in low-income housing in Old Town Portland. By visiting the same individuals each week, trusting relationships are formed. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal
volunteer is someone who is openminded and engaging, interested in meeting people from diverse backgrounds, and compassionate toward individuals struggling with addiction issues, disabilities, mental illness and poverty. We ask our volunteers for a weekly, 6 month minimum commitment. All ages and backgrounds welcome. CONTACT: Sarah Knuth,
sk@macdcenter.org, 222-5720, ext. 4
Neighborhood House WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Stock shelves
and distribute food in our emergency food pantry; help by playing with and reading to kids in one of our Head Start preschool classrooms; tutor kids in our afterschool programs; help recent immigrants learn English in one of our Adult ESL classes; answer phones at our senior center. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer
is passionate about helping vulnerable community members. Must pass a criminal background check for all programs, except the Emergency Food Box Program. Some programs require health screenings. Minimum time commitment varies by program. CONTACT: Kyrsten Johnson, kjohnson@nhweb.org
CONTACT: Stephanie Bolson,
Potluck in the Park
bolson@impactnw.org or 988-6000
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: PiP is an
In Other Words Feminist Community Center WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: In
Other Words is a volunteer-run feminist community center that supports, enriches, and empowers communities through educational and cultural events, art and 28
day-to-day life share a community project and a meal every Sunday. Potluck volunteers are kind, focused, high-energy people who enjoy serving others. CONTACT: Mary Hunger,
smilingcat444@gmail.com, 255-7611
Sisters Of The Road WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Work to end
poverty and homelessness through community-building, nonviolence and organizing for economic human rights! We especially need consistent volunteers to help our office at the reception desk, and help with the Cafe (where folks buy and barter for affordable meals on weekdays) is always needed. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: YOU! Anyone
who is willing to learn and practice nonviolence, antioppression and community-building; folks from every walk of life are welcome; must agree to help create a safer space and hospitable environment for our community. Twohour training is provided monthly and scheduling is sometimes flexible. Not open on weekends. CONTACT: Marisa Espinoza,
volunteer coordinator, volunteer@sistersoftheroad.org, 222-5694. ext. 43
Street Roots WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Street Roots
needs volunteers to help open our office and run our front desk several times a week. We also need volunteers to help update and deliver our Rose City Resource biannually; volunteers to obtain donations for silent auction items; detail-oriented writers and copy editors. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: As a small
organization that produces a lot of information in a fast-paced atmosphere, we love volunteers who are independently motivated, detailoriented, professional and unique. Our best volunteers go with the flow, completing regular tasks and adapting to others as needed. A proclivity toward compassion and social justice is desired. CONTACT: Israel Bayer,
israel@streetroots.org
The Library Foundation WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Believe
that our public library is a “pillar of democracy”? We believe it’s that, and a heck of a lot more. The Library Foundation provides support for many of Multnomah County Library’s most treasured programs, from summer reading to early literacy. If you love your library, we’d love to meet you.
all-volunteer organization that has served a free hot meal to anyone in need since 1991. Most important, each volunteer strives to treat everyone at the meal with dignity, respect, friendliness and kindness.
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Detail-oriented,
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Volunteers and
CONTACT: Kristin Wallace,
guests come from all walks of life. Diverse groups who do not meet in
kristinw@libraryfoundation.org 223-4009,
Willamette Week’s Volunteer Guide JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
personable folks who are in possession of basic computer skills, the ability to make a call or two when necessary, and are happy to handle project-based work would be an ideal fit.
Volunteers of America Oregon WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Be a friend
to young children as a Bus Buddy. Comfort seniors by assisting with meals and activities. Break the cycle of poverty by designing a project for atrisk youth. Learn job skills in retail or food service. Apply your professional expertise to staff development, marketing, and more! IDEAL VOLUNTEER: If you are passionate
preparing and running events. We also need law-related volunteers (i.e. attorney, paralegal, etc.) to act as judges and coaches during mock trials and similar activities. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: We welcome all
volunteers who have a desire to help our organization continue to provide hands-on civic education for teachers and students in Oregon. Introverts, chatty Cathys—come one, come all! Whether you are a teacher, lawyer, banker or simply a caring citizen, we have a volunteer job that will fit your skill.
about changing lives, starting with yours, our team can support you in learning new skills and making an impact among the most vulnerable in our community. We host a variety of opportunities to fit your interests and availability.
CONTACT: Shanti McCarter, office@classroomlaw.org
CONTACT: voaor.org/volunteer, Nancy Loso, nloso@voaor.org, 595-2009
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Ecology in
Education “I Have a Dream” Foundation - Oregon WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: There are
many ways you can help “I Have a Dream” change the lives of our Dreamers. Get involved in the classroom, outside the classroom, with kids and with the adults who are working so passionately to make a college degree possible for hundreds of low-income students. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Volunteers work to
create opportunities for Dreamers. Perhaps bringing professional skills, education experience, or just time, volunteers provide reliable relationships with Dreamers. Whether it’s a love of sports, math or reading, our Dreamers will benefit from your passion and commitment. There are also administrative opportunities to help advance the organization. CONTACT: Kelsey Pine,
info@ihaveadreamoregon.org, 287-7203
Architectural Heritage Center WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: The AHC’s
Ecology in Classrooms and Outdoors (ECO) Classrooms & Outdoors (ECO) is looking for volunteers to help our organization grow. Since 2005, we’ve been bringing hands-on science enrichment programs to elementary schools in Clackamas, Multnomah, Washington and Clark counties. We need assistance in multiple areas, including grant management, bookkeeping, networking and marketing our program. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer is
an independent, motivated person. We need individuals who are enthusiastic and experienced. Our volunteers are people who recognize the opportunity to make a big impact in the growth and success of ECO. ECO volunteers are dedicated, hard workers who genuinely contribute to the accomplishments of the organization. CONTACT: Bethany Thomas, bethany@ecologyoutdoors.org, 367-8920
Friends of Zenger Farm WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Help us
teach youth about food, farming and environmental stewardship as a farm field trip educator; teach healthy-eating-on-a-budget cooking classes as a food educator; or, volunteer as land steward, egg co-op or bee group member and tend the crops and livestock at our beautiful educational farm.
mission is to preserve the historic character and livability of our built environment, and to promote sustainability through the re-use of period homes and buildings. We need volunteers throughout the year to help with our outreach efforts, education programs, tours, collections, reception desk and library.
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: We seek individuals
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: The ideal volunteer
CONTACT: Prairie Hale,
will enjoy interacting with the public and will have an appreciation for historic preservation and the historic architecture of Portland. A willingness to be flexible with volunteer tasks is greatly appreciated. CONTACT: Ita Lindquist,
ital@visitahc.org
Classroom Law Project WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We need
volunteers to help with office tasks, graphic design, fundraising, and
who are enthusiastic about food, farming and environmental stewardship; enjoy working as a team; and are able to volunteer on a regular basis for a period of three months or more. We also welcome one-time volunteers to our regular work parties. prairie@zengerfarm.org
Sauvie Island Center WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: The Sauvie
Island Center offers field trips to elementary school students on the Sauvie Island Organics farm in the spring and fall. As a volunteer, you’ll lead small groups of students through hands-on, farm-based lessons on pollination, healthy soil, plant parts, the food web and planting and harvesting in the Grow Lunch Garden.
ADVERTORIAL
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Volunteers should
enjoy gardening, interacting with children, and being outdoors in all types of weather. You’ll need to attend a training day and should be able to commit to at least 4 field trips per season (spring or fall). Field trips occur on weekdays from 8:45 am-2:30 pm. CONTACT: Jennifer James,
jennifer@sauvieislandcenter.org, 341-8627
SMART (START MAKING A READER TODAY) WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Volunteer
with SMART and help children discover the joy of reading! We are an early-literacy nonprofit that engages community volunteers to help PreK3rd grade children become confident readers by providing one-on-one literacy support, valuable adult mentorship, and books to take home and keep. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Volunteers with
an enthusiastic love of books, who enjoy working with young children. They will need to be available to read for one hour per week during public school hours through mid-May.
you should connect with Bark! Our groundtruthing crew and events committee are looking for selfmotivated volunteers with time to commit and a passion for protecting our natural resources. CONTACT: Olivia Schmidt,
olivia@bark-out.org, 331-0374, bark-out.org
FRIENDS OF THE COLUMBIA GORGE WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Protecting
the Columbia Gorge. Volunteer activities include signing a petition, testifying at a hearing, or other opportunities. Visit gorgefriends.org and sign up for email updates. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Someone who is
passionate, willing to roll up their sleeves and take action, and believes in protecting this treasured landscape. CONTACT: Samantha Lockhart, samantha@gorgefriends.org, 241-3762, ext. 110
FRIENDS OF TREES WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We need
AUDUBON SOCIETY OF PORTLAND
help planting trees! We plant every Saturday from 9 am-1 pm between November and April around the Portland metro region. Simply show up dressed for the weather and wearing sturdy shoes. We provide gloves, tools and trained volunteer guidance, as well as breakfast treats and hot coffee. Rain or shine. Events calendar: FriendsofTrees.org/ calendar/portland-vancouver.
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: The
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer
CONTACT: Staci Sutton,
ssutton@getsmartoregon.org
ENVIRONMENT
Audubon Society of Portland is one of the Northwest’s leading conservation organizations, offering a wide range of natural history and environmental activities to members, the community, and especially volunteers. Whatever your interest or talents, there is a volunteer position for you. These include many regularly scheduled volunteer opportunities, as well as special projects and events. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Help answer the
likes being outdoors in the Pacific Northwest’s finest winter weather, meeting new friends and neighbors and laughing a lot, as well as learning about trees, how to plant them and why they’re awesome. All ages welcome. Family friendly. Can’t wait to work with ya’! CONTACT: Andy Meeks,
AndyM@FriendsofTrees.org, 595-0213
community’s appetite for natural history information, care for and feed injured wildlife in the Wildlife Care Center, help restore habitat in our wildlife sanctuary, join a citizen science team, lead school groups as they explore our Nature Sanctuary, be a voice for conservation, and help make Audubon’s special events successful.
SOLAR OREGON
CONTACT: Deanna Sawtelle,
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Individuals 18 years
volunteer coordinator, volunteercoordinator@ audubonportland.org
BARK WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Help Bark
monitor logging in Mt. Hood National Forest and spread the word about threats to our public land! Volunteer for our groundtruthing crew to learn skills that help us stop timber sales on Mt. Hood, or join our events committee to generate awesome ways for Portlanders to get involved. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: If you care about
Mt. Hood National Forest and think the public should have a say in public land management, then
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Tabling
events (i.e. workshops & expos), educational workshops, curriculum development, office administration & data entry, marketing/fund-raising, graphic design, language translation at events and for publishing. of age or older who are passionate about renewable energy. Volunteers will engage with diverse communities across Oregon to educate about the positive benefits of choosing solar energy. We are seeking on-going and short term volunteers in every region of Oregon. CONTACT: Emily Krafft,
emily@solaroregon.org, 231-5662
WILLAMETTE RIVERKEEPER WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Yes! We
LOVE volunteers! Willamette Riverkeeper has multiple volunteer opportunities, including monthly water quality monitoring, restoration work parties, and cleanup projects,
as well as intermittent special event support. Best of all, we can pretty much guarantee FUN (many of these opportunities are outside, and are on or near the river), great company, and—of course—an excellent cause! IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Someone who
is friendly and is interested in connecting with their river and community. CONTACT: Kate Ross,
planning—including our annual citywide Yogathon event. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: An ideal volunteer
is experienced with yoga and is passionate about wellness, health, and social justice. They are committed to helping our community by making sure tools to help with stress and anxiety are in place for community members who are working to change and restart their lives.
kate@willametteriverkeeper.org
CONTACT: Amy Eaton, amy@living-yoga.org, 546-1269
HEALTH & WELLNESS
LOAVES & FISHES CENTERS, THE MEALS-ON-WHEELS PEOPLE
FARMERS ENDING HUNGER
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Meals-
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Farmers
Ending Hunger does outreach at several local farmers markets throughout the year. Volunteers staff tables for FEH at the markets. Activities include making Mr. Potato Heads with real potatoes, answering questions and handing out informational postcards about our mission to get farmer-donated food crops to Oregon Food Bank.
On-Wheels drivers to deliver hot, noon meals and a friendly smile to homebound seniors. Routes available daily in Multnomah, Washington and Clark counties. Routes take about 90 minutes to complete. Have your business or service organization “adopt” a route and share the fun!
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Clinicians—MDs,
NPs or DOs—with experience managing common chronic health conditions like hypertension and diabetes. Gardeners of all levels of experience and ability, from master gardeners to those of you who can’t tell a weed from a vegetable. CONTACT: Sharetta Butcher, sbutcher@nxneclinic.org, 287-4932
THE WALLACE MEDICAL CONCERN WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We provide
urgent medical services for more than 4,000 uninsured patients in East Multnomah County through care given by volunteers like you. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Professionals from
healthcare providers to public health or administrative personnel with a passion for helping those who need care most. CONTACT: Anna Lynch, volunteer@wallacemedical.org, 489-1760. ext. 13
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Must be at least 18
SOCIAL ACTION
hunger issues in our community, knowledgeable about farming and/or willing to learn, likes to have fun, and good with people, especially kids.
years old with a valid driver’s license, insurance and your own car. Should like senior citizens and be willing to visit briefly with the seniors on the meal route. CONTACT: Stacey Myhrvold,
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: The Portland
smyhrvold@lfcpdx.org or 953-8137
CONTACT: John Burt, burtjgb@aol.com
NORTH BY NORTHEAST COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTER
LIVING YOGA
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We rely
metro area is seeing a dramatic growth in the population that is age 60+. Elders in Action has trained volunteers who provide problemsolving assistance to older adults. We need individuals who will work to solve problems and tackle important issues to help our communities better serve an aging population.
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Passionate about
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Living Yoga
needs experienced yogis to share their yoga practice with youth and adults in prison and drug and alcohol recovery. Opportunities for service also include: committees, office work, and marketing and special event
entirely on volunteers to staff our weekly clinics and to help maintain and grow our vegetable garden. While none of us alone can fix the problems with our healthcare system, our volunteers each make a real difference in people’s lives. We couldn’t do our work without them!
ELDERS IN ACTION
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Has an older adult
been important part of your life? In return, are you willing to provide a CONT. on page 30
Willamette Week’s Volunteer Guide JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
29
ADVERTORIAL
listening ear and become a problemsolver who can help older adults when their lives get a little complicated? Interested individuals should be 21+, some volunteer options require a background check. CONTACT: Mark Noonan,
mark@eldersinaction.org, 235-5474
EXCEED ENTERPRISES WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Our
believe in a woman’s right to health care without political interference, we want you on our team! All skill sets and availabilities are welcome, we will find a way to get you involved! CONTACT: Caitlin Campbell, caitlin@prochoiceoregon.org, 223-4510, ext. 13
RAPHAEL HOUSE OF PORTLAND
nonprofit organization is committed to helping lower the 80% unemployment rate facing adults with disabilities through vocational and personal development services. Volunteer positions range from activity aides and choir instructors to office assistants and field trip helpers. We also need professionals to join our specialty advisory committees.
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Answering
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer
House volunteer is compassionate, dedicated and able to offer unbiased support. This individual always arrives with an open mind and a positive, “go with the flow” attitude. He or she is willing to help wherever needed and can dedicate about 12 hours each month to volunteering.
is caring, has a sense of humor and is experienced working with people with disabilities, or has the disposition to successfully interact with individuals with special needs. You must pass a background check and drug screening, as well as volunteer a minimum of 1.5 hours a week.
calls on our 24/7 domestic violence crisis line, serving as a liaison to families in our shelter, assisting with youth activities, leading interest groups for all ages (art, cooking, music, etc.), shelter upkeep and maintenance, “behind the scenes” administrative support and much more. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: The ideal Raphael
shelleye@exceedpdx.com, 652-9036
CONTACT: Amanda Grebner, agrebner@raphaelhouse.com, 222-6507, ext. 315
HABITAT FOR HUMANITY PORTLAND/METRO EAST
SEXUAL ASSAULT RESOURCE CENTER
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Habitat
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Reach
CONTACT: Shelley Engelgau,
for Humanity builds year round throughout Multnomah County and Northern Clackamas County. Volunteers help with all aspects of construction. All skill levels are welcome but must have a willingness to learn and be at least 16 years old. Our construction days are Wednesday-Saturday 8:30 am-3:30 pm. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Habitat staff has
known for years that our volunteers are so sweet they could be made of sugar! Perhaps they are made of a special weather resistant, anti-dissolving sugar that only the Portland Metro area can produce. Habitat has many construction and non-construction volunteer opportunities available right now to help keep our momentum going on each of our homes.
out to survivors of sexual assault by volunteering as a Support Line Advocate. Volunteers on the Support Line provide crisis intervention, peer support, information and referral over the phone and in-person at hospitals and police stations primarily in Washington County and some response in Multnomah County. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Are you
compassionate, a good listener and supportive? If you are a woman with these qualities and have access to a car, you already have what it takes to be a support line advocate with SARC. Required training offered four times a year. CONTACT: Mariel Alvarado,
626-9100, volunteer@sarcoregon.org
CONTACT: Marianne McClure,
THE BUS PROJECT
Marianne@habitatportlandmetro.org
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We engage
NARAL PRO-CHOICE OREGON WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: In 2012
NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon will be working hard to elect pro-choice candidates to office in Oregon, and to protect women against restrictions on access to their full range of reproductive rights—including healthy pregnancy and safe, legal abortion. In order to do this, we will need volunteers for phoning voters, voter education, house parties, fundraising events, office assistance, and outreach at street fairs and events around the state! IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our ideal volunteer
is someone who is looking to make a difference in order to enact social change. If you are pro-choice and 30
YOUTH
FRIENDS OF OUTDOOR SCHOOL
BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS COLUMBIA NW
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Special
WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Start
something positive this year by becoming a Big Brother or Sister for a child. As a volunteer, you provide friendship by simply spending a few hours a month enjoying the activities you already like to do. And the best part is, it’s actually a lot of fun. There are children out there ready to get started. Are you? IDEAL VOLUNTEER: A caring adult willing
to establish a positive relationship with a child facing adversity. CONTACT: Al Sigala, al.sigala@bbbsnorthwest.org
ETHOS MUSIC CENTER WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We need
young folks and new folks (like you) to save democracy. We help people register to vote, teach about cuttingedge issues and get out that vote. This generation (the biggest and most diverse generation ever) can rewrite the history of Oregon. But first we need you to engage ’em.
volunteer teaching assistants to help us out at the 50+ classes we offer in schools throughout the Portland metro. Guitar, rock band, piano, hiphop production, band, world rhythms, emceeing, breakdancing, choir, and marimba to name a few! For music lovers (without music skills), office assistants and general laborers are always welcome!
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: We are on the hunt
IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Your passion for
for dedicated people who feel a burning desire for a better democracy. People who wanna help regular people take power and are ready to get down and dirty to do it. People who’ve got the energy and passion to inspire new folks to get engaged. CONTACT: Leslie Wright, leslie@busproject.org
Willamette Week’s Volunteer Guide JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
music and building community are stronger assets than a music degree! While we love volunteers with experience teaching and playing music, more importantly we need dedicated volunteers who can make a long-term commitment. Most classes meet weekly for one hour. CONTACT: Nick Kelso,
volunteer@ethos.org, 283-8467 ext. 112
events; fundraising; marketing; outreach events; special-needs mentor; expert speaker; high school student leader; office support IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Deeply passionate
about Outdoor School and environmental education. Hard working, upbeat, and flexible with a great sense of humor. CONTACT: Kate Scheaffer,
kschaeff@mesd.k12.or.us
GIRL SCOUTS OF OREGON AND SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Help build
strong girl leaders! Girl Scouts has fantastic short- and long-term volunteer opportunities and we can match you based on your skills, interests, time availability and goals. Lead a troop. Work an event. Share a skill. You can make a different in a girl’s life today! IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Our volunteers are
passionate about girl development. They believe in our mission to build girls of courage, confidence and character who make the world a better place. Moms, dads, college students, retirees, single adults, and grandparents have a place in Girl Scouts. Volunteering is fun and easy, and training is provided. CONTACT: Elizabeth Lorenzo,
elorenzo@girlscoutsosw.org 977-6822,
MORRISON CHILD AND FAMILY SERVICES WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: Morrison
Child and Family Services provides
a comprehensive continuum of mental health, substance abuse and prevention services for children from birth through age 21. Programs and services vary in intensity and length of treatment. We work with families and communities to make a positive difference in each child’s life. We are always looking for volunteers to provide a variety of services including mentoring, special events, childcare and group projects. IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Volunteers play
an integral role in helping Morrison achieve its mission of serving Oregon’s most vulnerable children. The civic participation of these caring individuals enriches the lives of the children we serve and contributes to the leadership of the organization. Our ideal volunteer would involve someone who is patient, kind, flexible and above all has the desire to provide support for a child in need of guidance. CONTACT: Rebecca Frinell,
rebecca.frinell@morrisonkids.org
ROCK ’N’ ROLL CAMP FOR GIRLS WHAT WE NEED HELP WITH: We are
looking for responsible volunteers age 18+ to help with our 2012 Summer Camps. Help girls get empowered by making noise at the Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls! Volunteer at one session, or all three! IDEAL VOLUNTEER: Female mentor
volunteer positions include band manager, band coach, instrument instructor, and workshop leaders. Positions open for musicians and non-musicians alike, as well as male volunteers. CONTACT: Molly Gray, Volunteer2012@girlrockcamp.org
JAN. 18-24
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. Prices listed are sometimes for advance ticket sales. At-the-door increases and socalled convenience charges may apply. Event lineups are subject to change after WW’s press deadlines. Editor: 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, JAN. 18
E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
The Doubleclicks, A Cat Called Grandpa, Paul Iannotti Group
Copy, Paper/Upper/Cuts, Vox Mod, Grapefruit
[CHAINMAIL AND CELLOS] Nerdfolk. It’s a thing. Of course it is. And in Portland, its preeminent proponents are the Doubleclicks, a sister duo that combines acoustic guitar, cello and some lovely vocal harmonies on songs about Dungeons and Dragons, Star Trek, Pride and Prejudice, superheroes and punctuation. Some songs are straight-up comedy numbers while others are more winkingly cute or clever, but all are musically and lyrically strong enough to fill a full set in what might otherwise seem like a shtick with a short shelf life. RUTH BROWN. Backspace, 115 NW 5th Ave., 248-2900. 9 pm. $5. All ages.
The Milk Carton Kids, The Brendan Hines
[SOFT FOLK] There’s a clean-cut professionalism to the Milk Carton Kids’ folk that seems more Paul Simon than Sam Beam, and that’s a mode that works just fine for the Los Angeles duo. The main selling points here are the duo’s tender harmonies and guitarist Kenneth Pattengale’s remarkable fretwork. There are moments on the group’s two albums ( Prologue and Respect, both released this past year) that make admirable use of both virtuosities. The Milk Carton Kids, however, have the good grace to spend the majority of Prologue and Retrospect ironing the seams from their dewy, heart-hurt ballads rather than stretching their considerable chops past the point of approachability. SHANE DANAHER. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+.
Pigeons, Nevele Nevele, Edna Vazquez
[FOLK] The simple folk music Portlander Michela Weishaar makes under the name Nevele Nevele is pretty, but, in the final accounting, also pretty unremarkable. What gleams amid these dusty acoustic compositions is Weishaar’s voice: The gifted young singer’s manner of over-forming her words and drawing syllables out over several rippling notes invites comparisons to Joanna Newsom or Y La Bamba’s Luz Elena Mendoza. Fun fact: Edna Vazquez, the impressive local mariachi singer who opens this eclectic show, is something of a Spanish-language TV star these days after appearing last year on the hit American Idol-style show Tengo Talento Mucho Talento. JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG. Kelly’s Olympian, 426 SW Washington St., 228-3669. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
THURSDAY, JAN. 19 The Pack A.D., My Goodness
[POST-BLUES] Any two-person guitar and drums band with a bluesy-garage sound is going to draw inevitable comparisons to the White Stripes and the Black Keys. And two-person guitarand-drums band with a bluesy-garage sound Pack A.D. is no exception. There are strong shades of both acts in this Vancouver-based duo; let’s throw in the Kills for good measure. But there’s more to this band than its influences, and its latest disc, 2011’s Unpersons, should go a long way in convincing audiences and critics of that fact. The alliteratively named members Maya Miller and Becky Black have cemented their move from laid-back bluesy licks to a more straightforward, aggressive rock sound, complete with fuzzy ’70s guitar riffs, biting vocals, some hints of punk, and, yes, more cowbell. RUTH BROWN. Doug Fir Lounge, 830
[MIDI FUNK] Longtime Portland producer/party god Copy is one of the more original beat makers in town. Whenever I hear his music, I feel like I’m dancing in the world of some zonked-out 8-bit video game. The idea that he sometimes mixes his MIDI-centric beats with the vocals of ’90s smoothsters like Bone Thugs-NHarmony and R. Kelly is completely insane, yet it somehow works (his bouncy take on Bone Thugs’ “Ecstacy,” for example, fits the song’s subject matter much better than the original). It’s his instrumental albums, however, that really shine: Hard Dream, his latest from 2010, is a melodic batch of emotional hardware built for those who dwell in the darker corners of cyberspace. Paper/Upper/Cuts’ Papi Fimbres, who mixes ethnic flute music with electro beats and live drumming, will also perform, making this one of the more weird yet awesome beatmaker showcases you’ll ever see. REED JACKSON. Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., 239-7639. 8:30 pm. $5. 21+.
A Lull, Deleted Scenes, Ravenna Woods
[ELECTRONIC TRIBAL CONFECTION] Chicago’s A Lull builds engaging, trance-influenced rock music that is almost as remarkable as the group’s talent for eschewing aspirants. Since 2008, the five-piece has been hard at work mixing thundering, world-music repetitions with the sleek production ethos of a rock group hungering wantonly after arenas. Think of them as Gang Gang Dance’s social-climbing older brother. This year’s Confetti (and its subsequent Confetti Reprise EP) features production that lets nary a hair fall out of place while piling on hypnotic percussion to create tracks of terminal, monolithic approachability. Confetti (and pretty much everything A Lull comes in contact with) sparkles with the big, dewy fingerprints of ambition. SHANE DANAHER. Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., 288-3895. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Lovers, Anaturale, Brittle Bones
[HEALING VIBES] You probably don’t need any stronger prod than Lovers’ divine way with bittersweet synth pop to get you to attend this show, but you should know about its reason for being before you step up to the sliding scale at the door. Lovers and buds are gathering tonight to raise money for a friend battling “debilitating and painful neurological problems.” And, of course, medical bills. I would say that’s a very good cause. This is also a prime opportunity to badger Lovers into playing “Rabbits,” a typically lovely paean to heartbreak that elevates the recently released odds-and-sods collection I Was the East to must-buy status. CHRIS STAMM. Rotture, 315 SE 3rd Ave., 234-5683. 9 pm. $8-$15 sliding scale. 21+.
Theophilus London, K Flay
[POST-HIP-HOP] YouTube videos of Theophilus London from a few years ago show an ’80s-obsessed MC starting to incorporate dance moves and singing parts into his songs. They don’t really foreshadow the genreless 2011 full-length Timez are Weird These Days, which climbed to blogworld fame on the heels of lead single “I Stand Alone,” first heard by most folks when it appeared on an episode of Entourage. Thing is, “I Stand Alone” doesn’t represent what Theophilus does best. “Why Even Try,” on the other hand, is a gorgeous, ghostly ballad that elicits comparisons to
Cyndi Lauper, TV On the Radio and the Clash—all in one song. Of course, sometimes when you paint with all the colors, the canvas gets a little muddy. Theophilus—a better singer, truth be told, than he is an MC—is walking the thin line between creating truly timeless and liberated pop music and adding to the mounting pile of directionless radio dribble. Either path should lead to mega-stardom. CASEY JARMAN. Wonder Ballroom, 128 NE Russell St., 284-8686. 8 pm. $14 advance, $16 day of show. All ages.
PROFILE FORCE FIELD PR
MUSIC
FRIDAY, JAN. 20 Peter Yarrow
[OCCUPY HONAH LEE] A leading light of the ’60s Greenwich Village scene and founding member (Mary was part of something called the Song Swappers, and Paul wasn’t even named Paul) of the most popular folk outfit ever to croon decorous, Peter Yarrow boasts a musical legacy that rests on enriching Bob Dylan (PP&M’s version of “Blowing in the Wind” topped a million sales) and co-writing every 10-year-old’s favorite drug anthem (though he still evades explanation of “Puff the Magic Dragon”). Yarrow’s legend has been kept alive primarily by memorable performances around notable protests stretching from the March on Washington through today’s Occupy Wall Street gadflies, and he built a liberal cred sufficient to win a pardon from President Carter after messing around with an underage groupie. All this despite a trademark vocal placidity that may as well have invented easy listening. JAY HORTON. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 8 pm. $25 advance, $28 day of show.
Black Elk, Nether Regions, Rabbits, Wizard Rifle
[GNAR NOIR] Black Elk-related news items have been in short supply these past couple of years, so the sludgemetal quartet’s return to its hometown, along with a fancy new rhythm section, seems as good an excuse as any to remind the world that the band still exists and is totally effing rad. Though the members have recently spent time haunting the Los Angeles area, these Portland natives are still some of the finest metal musicians ever to have paid taxes to Multnomah County. Always a Six, Never a Nine from 2008 holds up as an outstanding example of post-Melvins sludgiosity, even in a region that regards the Melvins as minor deities. Black Elk’s next release will be hard-pressed to one-up Always a Six, but three years’ worth of preparation bodes well for its prospects. SHANE DANAHER. Branx, 320 SE 2nd Ave., 234-5683. 9:30 pm. Free. All ages.
Gardens and Villa, Hosannas, Aan
[SO MUCH MORE THAN BEACH POP] A friend told me that Gardens and Villa singer Chris Lynch is really good at accents. I’ve never heard him do any, but judging by the way he sings, I bet my informant is correct. Lynch exercises a vocal range and creative syllabic experimentation that changes with every song. Even better, when he’s not singing, he’s playing the wooden flute. His Santa Barbara quintet’s sound shares the same kind of versatility, spanning from funky synth beats to ambient beach pop. The band spent two weeks camping in the back of labelmate and lauded producer Richard Swift’s Oregon studio, which I can imagine played a big role in the development of Gardens and Villa’s selftitled debut album, released last year. EMILEE BOOHER. Bunk Bar, 1028 SE Water Ave., 894-9708. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
David Friesen, John Gross
[JAZZ] This is a chance to check out material from the new CD, Circle of Three, by bassist David Friesen in collaboration with Greg Goebbel (piano) and John Gross (tenor sax). The group is about to get some sun in February in California and Arizona, then Friesen takes off to Europe (where he’s a serious concert attraction) for a month. John Gross has a résumé that includes
CONT. on page 33
YOUTH LAGOON SATURDAY, JAN. 21 [BOISE BEDROOM POP] Boise native Trevor Powers is not scared of blending in with the crowd. At first listen, his debut album as Youth Lagoon, drenched in damping effect and reverb, sounds like another product of a generation that specializes in computing emotion. But upon further inspection, one starts to notice just how good his stuff actually is. The songs are deeply revealing tales of personal heartache and triumph; the production is elegant, with catchy guitar melodies and intricate piano layers. And most surprisingly, despite loading down his vocals with effects, Powers can really sing. So why does Powers go to such great lengths to cover up his warm hum of a voice? He’s just being himself, the 22-year-old says. “I’m never going to be like, ‘Oh, what can I do that no one has ever heard?’ Or, ‘How can I be the most original?’ My belief is if you create what is really yourself, that’s where originality comes from.” As a self-portrait, Powers’ much-hyped album, The Year of Hibernation, is quite telling. The distortion effects that give his music an airy intricacy demonstrate perfectly the shy complexity of his personality. Powers, who dropped out of Boise State University last year to pursue music full time, believes the best way he can make music representative of himself is by making it sound “detached”— an emotion (or lack thereof ) he says he’s felt his whole life. After the breakup of a relationship in 2010, Powers felt worse than ever. That’s when his Bon Iver story began. Powers took the money he once spent on counseling for his chronic anxiety and funneled it into studio time. It took him a year to record the album. One can hear Powers’ mood on the disc. The record’s soft piano lines and melodic synths are used to create an ambience of separation. “There’s a lot of music that is fueled by being around people and partying,” he says. “The stuff that I write is more reflective. I like to be alone to gather my thoughts.” Still, it would be nice to hear Powers’ voice laid bare. His recent release of a cover of John Denver’s “Goodbye Again,” recorded with almost no vocal reverb, proves just how powerful his voice can be. With a whole generation of musicians using vocal effects—from T-Pain to James Blake to Washed Out—will future listeners find The Year of Hibernation sounds time-stamped like ’70s disco or ’80s smooth jazz? Powers isn’t worried about it. The vocal effects are “mysterious elements that draw you into the rest of the song rather than just allowing you to focus on what the vocals are saying,” he says. About that John Denver cover: Powers blames the engineer who helped record the song for not adjusting his vocals correctly—otherwise, he says, he would have used some effects there, too. Youth Lagoon’s debut is a striking, impressive disc. And if Powers’ music flies along comfortably with the prevailing indie-music winds, he says he’s not worried about it. “Whatever the music calls for, I will use,” he says. “Whether it’s being overused or not.” REED JACKSON. There’s a whole lot to love behind Youth Lagoon’s wall of sound.
SEE IT: Youth Lagoon plays Doug Fir Lounge on Saturday, Jan. 21, with Pure Bathing Culture. 9 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. 21+. Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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m cm enami ns m u s i c
CRYSTAL
THE
M
C
M
E
N
A
282-6810
WEST COAST
CHAMPIONSHIPS
9 PM $5 21+OVER
sat jan 21 3 P.M.
WITH VJ KITTYROX
Performing live for his debut solo release “Iron By Water”
WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
chris funk PETE CORNETT RICH LANDAR
5:30 p.m. is “eagle time” • free
WILL WEST & TANNER CUNDY
SAT JAN 21 21 & OVER LOLA’S ROOM
DOGTOOTH STRANGLED DARLINGS THE WHEELER BROTHERS FREE
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20 5:30 p.m. is “eagle time” • free
(w/ Deen Castronovo from Journey)
PURLING HISS
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21
THE STUDENT LOAN
PORCHES· VIOLET ISLE LOADED FOR BEAR
CRYSTAL CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
THE RESOLECTRICS DUOVER· LEWI LONGMIRE
FRIDAY–SUNDAY, JANUARY 27–29
AND MUCH MUCH MORE...
(UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED)
hooDoo BASh WITH UNHOLY MODAL ROUNDERS AND
sun jan 29 all ages
FRI JAN 27 all ages · $22 adv
MICHAEL HURLEY-lola’s 2/3 HER BENEFIT: DJ ANJALI 2/5 BARGAIN HUNTING CHALI 2NA-lola’s 2/17 big head todd & the monsters 2/22 THE FRAY 2/24 pdx jazz festival: bill frisell 2/25 pdx jazz festival: vijay iyer, prasanna & nittin mitta (3 pm) 2/25 pdx jazz festival: charlie hunter (9:30 pm) 3/2 & 3 RAILROAD EARTH 3/4 MARCH FOURTH MARCHING BAND 3/9 JAY FERRAR 3/15 NEEDTOBREATHE 3/16 GEORGE CLINTON 3/21 drive-by truckers 3/22 kaiser chiefs 3/23 OF MONTREAL 3/24 GALACTIC 3/31 dark star orchestra 4/11 GOTYE 4/18 & 19 JEFF MANGUM 4/27 WILD FLAG 5/2 snow patrol 5/25 trampled by turtles 2/14
DANCEONAIR.COM
DOORS 8pm MUSIC 9pm UNLESS NOTED
FREE LIVE MUSIC nIghtLy · 7 PM 1/18-21
MATT BROWN
DJ’S · 10:30 PM 1/19 DJ Anjali & the Incredible Kid 1/20 Standing 8 1/21 DJ Stargazer
1/22-28
A SIMPLE COLONY
CRYSTAL HOTEL & BALLROOM Ballroom: 1332 W. Burnside · (503) 225-0047 · Hotel: 303 S.W. 12th Ave · (503) 972-2670
CASCADE TICKETS
cascadetickets.com 1-855-CAS-TIXX
outlets: crystal ballroom box office, bagdad theater, edgefield, east 19th st. café (eugene)
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
Friday, January 20 & 27
Portlandia Friday Night TV Party
Sunday, January 22 & 29
School of Rock
Saturday, January 28
Nomading Film Festival Super Bowl XLVI Opera vs. Cinema: Aida vs. Metropolis
Saturday, February 11
Miz Kitty’s Parlour
Tuesday and Wednesday, February 14 & 15
Mortified Portland
Wednesday, February 22
OMSI Science Pub
Sunday, February 26 84th Academy Awards Call our movie hotline to find out what’s playing this week!
(503) 249-7474
1/26
HOTEL
FREE
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24 FREE
FREE
WWW.DANCEONAIR.COM
at CRYSTAL
MONDAY, JANUARY 23
JACOB ARNOLD TIME & THE BELL
moe. DANNY BARNES
COMPLETE INFO AT
AL’S DEn
FEATURING PORTLAND’S FINEST TALENT 6:30 P.M. SIGN-UP; 7 P.M. MUSIC· FREE
MUSIC AT 8:30 P.M. MON-THUR 9:30 P.M. FRI & SAT
DJ RESCUE (ZIA FROM THE DANDY WARHOLS) MARTY MARQUIS OF BLITZEN TRAPPER A SIMPLE COLONY 80S VIDEO DANCE ATTACK POISON WATERS BINGO TOURS & TASTINGS HOTEL PACKAGES WORKSHOPS
PDXJazz presents: Cyrille Aimée & Diego Figueiredo: “Django To Jobim”
Friday, February 10
5:30 p.m. is “eagle time” • free
SAT JAN 28 ALL AGES $22 ADV
Thursday, January 19
Sunday, February 5
OPEN MIC/SINGER SONGWRITER SHOWCASE
an evening with
M
The historic
REVERB BROTHERS
MON FEB 13 ALL AGES
3 DAYS AND NIGHTS OF MUSIC AND EVENTS
C O
ROBERT HOLLADAY ERIN LEIKER AND FRIENDS JOSH COLE BAND
SUNDAY, JANUARY 22
sun jan 22 7 p.m. show · all ages
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KEVIN VAN GEEM QUARTET THE HIGH DEFINITION QUARTET THE MAGIC BEETS FREE
Kandles At Nine
special performance by the Portland Gay Mens Choir Celebrity appearances by Daniel Baldwin, Deen Castronovo from Journey, Dax Jordan, Ian Karmel, Ron Funches and more...
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18
“UNFILTERED” INDIE ROCK SHOWCASE!
THURSDAY, JANUARY 19
2012 PORTLAND MUSIC AWARDS Robbie Laws Band Brad Parsons
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LIVE STAGE & BIG SCREEN!
BEARD & Rob Wynia MUSTACHE (of Floater)
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20 CRYSTAL BALLROOM
S
1624 N.W. Glisan • Portland 503-223-4527
14th and W. Burnside
THE SECOND ANNUAL
N
MISSION THEATER
CRYSTAL BALLROOM heyLOW entertainment
I
836 N RUSSELL • PORTLAND, OR • (503)
HOTEL & BALLROOM
80s VIDEO DANCE ATTACK
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Find us on
Event and movie info at mcmenamins.com/mission
MUSIC ALICIA ROSE
FRIDAY-SATURDAY
FAST, CHEAP AND OUT OF CONTROL: Fitz and the Tantrums play the Roseland Theater on Tuesday. a stint in Don Ellis’ band of the late ’60s (probably the only band to get the folks at the Fillmore grooving in 7/4 time), and the sax man takes full advantage of the tenor sax’s range, blasting the sound wide open on the loud stuff. DAN DEPREZ. Camellia Lounge, 510 NW 11th Ave., 221-2130. 8 pm. $6. 21+.
Left Coast Country
[ROMP STOMP] Fitting how genres born of strife and suffering are in vogue again. Neo-soul, lo-fi and modern folk all speak to our empty pockets and general disheartening. But there’s optimism in them all, especially in the folk world, where Portland sextet Left Coast Country dwells. Anything but excessive, LCC sticks to an original recipe of stringed Americana, turning out gallivanting, breakneck ditties fit for a state-fair chili cook-off. Debut Dark, Down & Blue is about as selfexplanatory as it gets, a guided fiddle-and-banjo tour through defeat, drinkin’ and the delight of days ahead. MARK STOCK. East Burn, 1800 E Burnside St., 2362876. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
SATURDAY, JAN. 21 Renegade Saints, Haymaker
[ROCK] This is a 20th-anniversary celebration for Renegade Saints, a band whose family tree includes classic Oregon groups like Nine Days’ Wonder and Kerosene Dream. The guys are sounding as sharp and nimble as ever. If this were the band’s debut, they could be marketed with equal ease to alt-jam-band fans, new-country listeners and classic-rock zealots. The churning, sinewy rhythm section burbles behind guitar solos that sizzle and spark like a downed power line. If you have, like Peter Buck, a one-minute maximum tolerance for guitar solos, you may find that four minutes into the song before getting to the first verse or melody is a bit much. For the rest of the world, it’s a party. DAN DEPREZ. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 7196055. 8 pm. $10 advance, $12 day of show. Minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. All ages.
Village Idiot, Dirtnap, Ratpriest
[METAL FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS] In the late ’90s, Village Idiot was one of few local bands that could pack the Satyricon on a Saturday night. Its blend of funky hard rock absolutely presaged the careers of Rob Zombie and Static-X. Of course, doing it first and doing it better rarely pays—particularly if you’re stuck in Southeast Portland, rather than hobnobbing around Hollywood. Village Idiot has done a few reunion shows in the past couple of years, usually when bassist Rob Keith is visiting from Ontario. This particular occa-
sion is to help benefit a longtime friend of the band—Jen McCargarCharles—in her battle with cancer. Oof. NATHAN CARSON. Ash Street Saloon, 225 SW Ash St., 226-0430. 9:30 pm. $10. 21+.
DK Stewart Sextet
[BLUES] If DK Stewart’s new album, Live in Olympia, is any indication, tonight’s show should feature plenty of New Orleansinfluenced, woozy blues. Though the pianist/singer was reared in the Northwest, he has a definite taste for gumbo that shines through on covers of songs by Big Easy folks like Allen Toussaint and Aaron Neville. Worry not that Mr. Stewart looks a bit like the Most Interesting Man in the World from those Dos Equis commercials, he’s an able frontman who has fun with both his rhythm section and a threepiece horn group led by saxophonist Chris Mercer, who once played with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. CASEY JARMAN. Duff’s Garage, 1635 SE 7th Ave., 234-2337. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
Wayne Horvitz, Joe Doria, Bobby Previte, Tim Young
[PROGRESSIVE STUFF] There exists in Seattle a parallel universe to the rock scene everyone knows about, a world where music is created that owes more to Schoenberg and New York “No Wave” than to the Melvins and Tad. Wayne Horvitz seems to be its musical hub. The musicians playing tonight form Sweeter Than the Day, the Seattle keyboardistcomposer’s most recent venture. While Horvitz has made his mark with soundtracks, string quartets and progressive sideman gigs, he’s also been an effective producer for Cathy Croce and other singersongwriters. One of Horvitz’s gifts to society was to create “modern” music that “regular” people like: He has proven it can be done. DAN DEPREZ. Goodfoot Lounge, 2845 SE Stark St., 503-239-9292. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
The All-American Rejects
[RADIO BLAST] Don’t hate them because they’re beautiful. Hate the boys in All-American Rejects because they’re beautiful and sickeningly skilled at writing the kind of burnished pop songs that even mute metalheads can’t help but hum. Sure, AAR has devoted 10 years to refining a sound indebted to only the most vomitous pap— consider this the place where Maroon 5 and post- Pinkerton Weezer meet and maul each other—but once in a while the unholy formula coughs up something dumbly stunning like 2008’s Wheatus rip “Gives You Hell” or the brand-new “Someday’s Gone,” which is maddeningly addictive despite being bland as oatmeal. Sometimes pop is like flu: You
CONT. on page 35 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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feb 10tH • RoSelANd • 8pm • All AgeS 503-224-tIXX
SAFEWAY-MUSIC MILLENNIUM
SATURDAY-SUNDAY
The Pimps of Joytime
[BROOKLYN ZOO-DOO FUNK] It takes some funk groups between eight and (depending on the current fire code for Mothership capacity) 45 musicians to craft a solid sound. Brooklyn’s Pimps of Joytime achieve nastiness with only five members, and on last summer’s Janxta Funk!, the group solidified its mix of futuristic thump laced with hip-hop flourishes, a little Latin heat, synth bleeps, soulful three-way vocals and ample call-and-responses. The relatively minimalist approach leaves some definite holes in sound, but the group ably uses those spaces to build anticipation for the inevitable booty-dropping bomb raid. AP KRYZA. Mount Tabor Theater, 4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. 9 pm. $15. 21+.
Ninja, Holy Children, Kaleido Skull
[FISTS OF FURY] No surprise: The members of Ninja dress as ninjas. But beyond the obvious (don’t call it a gimmick for fear of a wakizashi to the throat), there’s a lot of musical talent at work here. While some concept artists mine punk and metal tropes, this new Portland outfit employs some pleasantly abrasive hooks from the depths of early-’90s noise rock. And beyond the smoke, lasers, kung fu and actual rock, there are videos. Find Ninja (on its website or YouTube) and you’ll see remarkable footage of the band setting up on the street beside an unconscious drunk dude. His musical awakening is a hilarious surprise. Hi-ya! NATHAN CARSON. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., 248-1030. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
SUNDAY, JAN. 22 Portland Music Awards: Kandles at Nine, Robbie Laws Band, Brad Parsons, Rob Wynia, more
[THE GRIMMY’S] Whether or not the stars of Portlandia appear onstage this Portland Music Awards, there’s a fine skit to be rendered from the weirdly personalized contempt in which the city’s self-styled arbiters of artistic achievement hold the Pammy’s. Five years of escalating discontent, and scene manicurists no more appreciate popularity contests than PMA organizer Craig Marquardo in any way understands indie cred. Try explaining to an oldschool show-biz mentality why the ghosts of Top 40 past coast through songs we know by heart (Tommy Tutone, members of Journey and Everclear) even though the tunes have little to do with Portland’s past and no resemblance at all to the sound of Puddletown present. For a promoter hoping to just land enough asses in seats ’midst a town bled dry of genuine celebrity, why not bring in a hall-of-fame comic sniffing proper groupies (Gallagher, last year, and there are rumors of a universally beloved roastmaster
CONT. on page 36
503.288.3895 info@mississippistudios.com 3939 N. Mississippi
all shows 21+ 8pm doors 9pm show (except where noted)
A Chicago quintet of multi-instrumentalists who create an experimental sonic landscape that gracefully encompasses a multitude of genres
STEVIE WONDER
DELETED SCENES +RAVENNA WOODS
THUR JAN 19th
The finest of Northwest players who pay tribute to our favorite soul artist
JOEYTRIBUTE PORTER’S TO
A LULL
Blue Iris, The Tomorrow People, Bubble Cats
[ROCK STEADY] It’s fitting that Riley Geare, frontman for the Tomorrow People, moonlights as the Thin White Duke in a Bowie tribute act called Queen Bitch. Throughout his non-cover band’s latest album, Rose City Rose, you can hear the influence of Bowie and his glammy compatriots, as well as the steaming drive of power pop and rock. For a Portland band, the Tomorrow People are also refreshingly free of self-conscious bullshit. Joining Geare and company on this bill are local psych-tinged rockers Blue Iris and the equally unpretentious punks of Bubble Cats. ROBERT HAM. Slabtown, 1033 NW 16th Ave., 2230099. 9 pm. $5. 21+.
friendly. sounds great. best burger. independent. musician-owned /operated
PROFILE DESTINY LANE
can’t help but catch it. CHRIS STAMM. Hawthorne Theatre, 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 233-7100. 8 pm. $20 advance, $25 day of show. 21+.
MUSIC
$8 Adv
TWO SHOWS!
FRI JAN 20th
$15 Adv
SAT JAN 21st
$15 Adv
Rock, jazz, and blues come alive with famed instrumental rock guitarist Johnny A behind the strings, an eloquent player who has earned himself a spot as one of the great guitar masters
BEN DARWISH AND SHOOK TWINS THURSDAY, JAN. 19 [FOLK-STEP] It’s an unseasonably bright January day; sunlight pours through the windows of Caffe Vita and backlights Ben Darwish’s ’fro. The local keyboardist-composer, 27, has a cerebral, serious air about him—and indeed, Darwish takes composing seriously, using terms like “half-time” and occasionally struggling to put heady musical concepts into words. The flaxen-haired identical twins sharing Darwish’s table, meanwhile, are lighthearted and sprightly. Laurie and Katelyn Shook, of local folk trio Shook Twins, say stuff like, “Ben is a badass!” They don’t really read music. It’s a strange bedfellowship—but then, theirs is a strange project. On Jan. 19 at the Alberta Rose Theatre, Darwish and Shook Twins (with guitarist William Seiji Marsh and drummer Kevin Van Geem) will premiere The Clear Blue Pearl, a 10-song “epic” that tells the story of “a couple on a quest for water after a devastating drought,” set to music Darwish, a University of Oregon music grad, describes as “fantasy folk-step.” How that’ll sound is anybody’s guess: The ensemble hasn’t recorded any material (though it plans to) aside from a holiday tune (for WW’s annual holiday compilation) and a piano-driven, uplifting demo version of The Clear Blue Pearl’s final song. Darwish positions The Clear Blue Pearl in the concept-album tradition, and says he set out to write his own concept piece out of frustration with his lack of worldliness. “I haven’t done a lot of stuff that I would like to do, like travel,” the Portland native says. “So I thought, why don’t I just make it up? I’ve always had kind of a big imagination, but I haven’t really been able to use it until now.” The twins were drawn to the project’s imaginativeness. “I love it when artists break out of the box a little bit,” Katelyn Shook says. “You don’t always have to write about looove and shit.” The Clear Blue Pearl’s “folk-step” tag, Darwish admits, is mostly for show. While the piece features folk and dubstep elements prominently, embellishing traditional harmonies with distinguishing dubstep characteristics like adagio tempo and “wobble” bass, Darwish notes that it also bears the influence of Tuvan throat singing. So…what is it? “It’s just my music,” Darwish says. “I feel like this, out of anything I’ve done, is…less like a combination of two things, [more] like an original sound.” Recent collaborations have found Darwish playing everything from Afro-funk to minimalist jazz instrumentals. But paradoxically, the more he mingles his sensibilities with others’, the more distinctive they become. “All these things I’ve done are just becoming a melting pot,” Darwish says. “I feel like I’m finally starting to find my own voice in composition.” JONATHAN FROCHTZWAJG.
JOHNNY A
Jazz meets rock meets folk meets...dubstep?
SEE IT: Ben Darwish and Shook Twins play the Alberta Rose Theatre on Thursday, Jan. 19. 8:30 pm. $10. Minors must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.
TWO SHOWS!
SUN JAN 22nd
$18 Adv
Stephen Ashbrook is a singer/songwriter known for alt rock and guitar driven songs, with rich baritone vocals and swelling folk induced songs that can’t help but win your heart
7:30 Doors, 8:00 Show
MON JAN 23rd TUE JAN 24th
$20 Adv $20 Adv
Up-start genre benders take the stage for a night of roots influenced music and soaring vocals
STEPHEN
ASHBROOK +SARAH GWEN PETERS PARTIALLY SEATED 7:00 Doors, 7:15 Show
WED JAN 25th
$10 Adv
Into The Woods 2nd anniversary party
NIGHT MOVES
GRANDPARENTS +1939 ENSEMBLE
FRI JAN 27th
$5 Adv
DKOTA V & THE DIRTY PRETTY +FANNO CREEK
THURS JAN 26th
Famed UK band travel stateside, bringing their astounding experimental dance songs to the stage
FUJIYA & MIYAGI ADVENTURES! WITH MIGHT +HERE COME DOTS
SAT JAN 28th The Parson Red Heads’ folk songs capture the essence of the laid back Laurel Canyon rocker and the breezy psych of Southern California
THE PARSON RED HEADS
$10 Adv
Melancholy psychedelia from Montreal-based artist who crafts symphonic ambient pop
DOLDRUMS
TOMMY KEENE +SALLY CREWE
CHROME WINGS
& THE SUDDEN MOVES
SUN JAN 29th
$5 Adv
$10 Adv
MON JAN 30th
$6 Adv
Coming Soon: 2/1 - PAPER/ UPPER/ CUTS 2/2 - DAVID JACOBS-STRAIN 2/3 - LAURA GIBSON 2/4 - THEE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA 2/6 - THE FEATURES 2/7 - ELEANOR FREIEDBERGER 2/8 - HURRY UP! 2/9 - JENNA ELEFSON 2/10 - NICKY CROON & THE SWINGING RICHARDS 2/11 - MATTHEW GOOD 2/12 - JARAD MILES 2/14 - HOUNDSTOOTH
www.mississippistudios.com Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
35
MUSIC
MAKE IT A NIGHT Present that night’s show ticket and get $3 off any menu item Sun - Thur in the dining room
DOUG FIR RESTAURANT + BAR OPEN 7AM - 2:30AM EVERYDAY SERVING BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, LATE-NIGHT. FOOD SPECIALS 3-6 PM EVERYDAY COVERED SMOKING PATIO, FIREPLACE ROOM, LOTS OF LOG. LIVE SHOWS IN THE LOUNGE...
THE RETURN OF THE KINGS OF HUSHED, HARMONIC MELODIES
MILK CARTON
WEDNESDAY!
The
KIDS
+THE BRENDAN HINES
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 18 •
$10 ADVANCE
AN ALBUM RELEASE CELEBRATION FOR PDX ROCKERS
FRIDAY!
SCORCHING INDIE ROCK FROM VANCOUVER BC-BASED BLUESY GARAGE DUO
THURSDAY!
+MY GOODNESS
THURSDAY JANUARY 19 •
DEEPLY PERSONAL DREAM POP FROM BOISE BUZZ BUILDER
YOUTH
SATURDAY!
•
$8 ADVANCE
AN INTIMATE EVENING WITH SO-CAL ROCKERS
AUGUSTANA +GRAFFITI 6
SUNDAY JANUARY 22 •
SATURDAY JANUARY 21 •
$18 ADVANCE
“A LOOK TO THE WEST” TOUR WITH ATOMIC TOM
ATOMIC TOM $10 ADVANCE
MELODIC HEARTFELT INDIE POP FROM THE UK
+ANYA MARINA
•
FAST
$10ADVANCE ADVANCE $10
TUESDAY JANUARY 31 •
$10 ADVANCE
TWO NIGHT EXTRAVAGANZA WITH WELSH INDIE ROCKERS
JESSIE BAYLIN
+THE WATSON TWINS
THURSDAY JANUARY 26 •
$10 ADVANCE
AN EVENING WITH HEAD-TURNING SOUL REVIVALISTS
GARY CLARK JR.
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 14 •
TIX GOING
FAST
$15ADVANCE ADVANCE $10
W/ SPECIAL GUEST HAYMAKER
$9 ADVANCE
ELEGANTLY ATMOSPHERIC BALLADRY FROM DENMARK
TEITUR
+AUNT MARTHA
Doors at 7pm, Show at 8pm - EARLY SHOW! $12 ADVANCE
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 2 •
AN ALBUM RELEASE EXTRAVAGANZA WITH PDX BUZZ-BUILDERS
+HOUNDSTOOTH
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 4 •
$8 ADVANCE
COLD WAR KIDS - 2/26, 2/27, 2/28 on sale 1/20 WHITE RABBITS - 3/22 MEGAFAUN - 3/31 FIREHOSE - 4/6 CHAIRLIFT - 4/8 HANNI EL KHATIB - 4/9 All of these shows on sale at Ticketfly.com
WAX FINGERS 2/9 • WHERE’S THE BAND TOUR 2/10 • ALIALUJAH CHOIR 2/11 CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL & THE AUGUST LIGHT 2/15 BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB 2/17 • AND AND AND 2/18 ADVANCE TICKETS AT TICKETFLY - www.ticketfly.com and JACKPOT RECORDS • SUBJECT TO SERVICE CHARGE &/OR USER FEE ALL SHOWS: 8PM DOORS / 9PM SHOW • 21+ UNLESS NOTED • BOX OFFICE OPENS 1/2 HOUR BEFORE DOORS • ROOM PACKAGES AVAILABLE AT www.jupiterhotel.com
36
THE RENEGADE SAINTS
TIX AT THE DOOR
+QUIET LIFE
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
[YOUNG FOLKS] With its simple structures, relaxed tempos and generally laid-back demeanor, up-and-buzzing local quartet Youth is positioning itself as Portland’s answer to Real Estate. Call it “casual pop”: It’s music that announces itself with as little fanfare as the band’s name. For all its no-big-whoop presentation, though, the group’s songs are built on strong melodies and shimmering, reverb-lined guitars that are difficult to shake. It’ll make a great pairing here with San Diego’s Chairs Missing. Named after a Wire album, you’d expect a lot of choppy, angular riffs from the band, but the trio trades in similarly warm, wavy feelings as Youth, only with a hazier psychedelic sheen. MATTHEW SINGER. Rontoms, 600 E Burnside St., 2364536. 9 pm. Free. 21+.
Creamers, Vicious Pleasures
[VINTAGE HARDCORE] Last year was a killer one for ’80s-style hardcore made by young people who were but incipient glints in various eyeballs back when Ian MacKaye still had something resembling a hairline to shave. Get thee to an Internet booth and hunt down amazing records by Omegas, Slobs, School Jerks and Wiccans for proof that I do not exaggerate. The best of the revivalist bunch might be Creamers, an Austin quartet adding a soupçon of unhinged strangeness to the mannered routine in the form of a frantic vocalist who spits, shouts and howls against the distorted squall like a man truly possessed. Protect your neck. CHRIS STAMM. The Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., 473-8729. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
Jason Urick, Tunnels, Million Mists
[ROSE CITY SOUNDSCAPER] First, Portland was able to coax Emeralds guitarist Mark McGuire to join the local scene. Now, we can boast of another amazing experimentalist calling our fair city his home: Jason Urick. The former Marylander plays in a much more ambient field than McGuire, however, bending electronic samples and melodies to his will to create engulfing waves of energy and bliss. The glory of Urick’s newly released LP, I Love You, is feeling the tickly joy of his pitchshifted vocal samples, which have a giddy cartoonishness that lightens the effect of some of the disc’s darkest moments. ROBERT HAM. Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny St., 248-1600. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
CONT. on page 40
20th ANNIVERSARY SHOW!
Sunday, Jan 22nd
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 7 & WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 8 • $14 ADVANCE
+WHITE DRESS
- FREE CD with admission -
SOLD OUT
SATURDAY JANUARY 28 •
YOURS
BLUES-ROCK FROM UP-AND-COMING AUSTINITE SHREDDER
PETER YARROW
Saturday, Jan 21st
LOS CAMPESINOS! LOST LANDER +PARENTHETICAL GIRLS
PETER, PAUL & MARY’S
NASHVILLE-BASED SINGER/SONGWRITER AND HOTEL CAFE ALUM
TUESDAY JANUARY 24 •
EPIC PSYCHEDELIC ROCK FROM SWEDEN
GRAVEYARD +RADIO MOSCOW
Friday, Jan 20th
AND FRIENDS:
SHAKES
FRIDAY JANUARY 27
WITH JOHN HEART JACKIE AND LOCAL STRANGERS
CHRISTOPHER YARROW• LAURA VEIRS• BLAQUE BUTTERFLY •ADAM+KRIS
SCARS ON 45 ALABAMA TIX GOING
“THE CLEAR BLUE PEARL”
Doors 6:30 $15 suggested donation / VIP tixkets available at www.eileenformayor.com
+VIOLET ISLE
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 25 •
$10 ADVANCE
PORTLAND START-UPS ROCK WITH EILEEN BRADY FEATURING SPECIAL MUSICAL GUEST PRIORY
SOLD OUT TIX AT THE DOOR
TIX AT THE DOOR
this go ’round) and whichever recognizable locals own a tux (Daniel Baldwin is quickly becoming our Bob Hope). And, of course, there are the inexplicable samplings of a genuine diversity—the Sengalese emigré, the blues-bar careerist, the teen who helplessly surrendered her youth to a love of scat singing—who visibly delight playing the main stage at the Crystal before a misty-eyed family and attentive crowd, at least until they’re told to feel differently. David Giuntoli, our host this evening, stars in that other TV show showcasing the deceptive livability of a town actually under the thrall of a demonic hierarchy wholly unnoticed by the average citizen. In Grimm, though, the handful of souls to understand the byzantine mechanisms guiding infernal notions of success—well, they understand they’re cursed. JAY HORTON. Crystal Ballroom, 1332 W Burnside St., 225-0047. 7 pm. $20. All ages.
Youth, Chairs Missing, Still Caves
$10 ADVANCE
+PURE BATHING CULTURE SOLD OUT
FRIDAY JANUARY 20
THE DANCE PARTY
DEBUT
LAGOON
WATER & BODIES +FOX AND THE LAW
BEN DARWISH + SHOOK TWINS
PACK A.D.
RAGS & RIBBONS
Thursday, Jan 19th
SUNDAY
ALASDAIR FRASER NATALIE HASS Tuesday, Jan 24th
DAVID GRAEBER DEBT: THE FIRST 5000 YEARS
Wednesday, Jan 25th
SUNBEARS! BLUE CRANES LOG ACROSS THE WASHER Thursday, Jan 27th
JOSH GARRELS & JOSH WHITE
Alberta Rose Theatre (503) 764-4131 3000 NE Alberta AlbertaRoseTheatre.com
ALBUM REVIEW
FRUITION IT WON’T BE LONG EP (SELF-RELEASED) [ROOTS MUSIC] Pretty tends to eclipse everything around it. And in pop music, that’s generally a good thing. Some of the prettiest music being made today—cough, Bon Iver—doesn’t always have enough substance behind the initial attractiveness to hold together when poked and prodded by an inquiring mind. Fruition, though, holds up fine. The music—which tends toward gentle acoustic balladry with a twist of twang or dance numbers that flirt with bluegrass and honky-tonk but never fully commit to either—is plenty pretty. The string solos—mandolin and guitar, mostly—are masterfully played and well-positioned; no one here gets jammy for jamming’s sake. The group’s dual male vocalists harmonize well and its third, female singer, Mimi Naja, has a striking voice that’s tough enough so you feel like you’re being let in on a secret when she pours on the sugar. And upon kicking the tires of Fruition’s new EP, It Won’t Be Long, one notices the finer points of the Portland string quintet’s songwriting. Opener “Turn Your Love” is lyrically sharp and affecting; swingabilly rocker “Bent” proves the group knows its music history; closer “Just Close Your Eyes” is the most lyrically and musically predictable song on the disc, but some inventive harmonies and solid instrumental solos pull it through. Fruition’s musical vision is much clearer now than it was on the group’s somewhat uncomfortably bluesy 2010 self-titled debut. In a town where string bands are a dime a dozen, the longhaired quintet is starting to scratch at something a bit bigger than its genre and take real pride in the craftsmanship behind its work. You might say this group’s plans are really coming to... but let’s not say that. CASEY JARMAN. SEE IT: Fruition releases It Won’t Be Long on Friday, Jan. 20, at Bossanova Ballroom, with Tango Alpha Tango and special guests. 9 pm. $10. 21+.
MUSIC CALENDAR
[JAN. 18-24] Rumpus Room
= 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. For more listings, check out wweek.com.
10555 SE Division St. AngelRhodes
Someday Lounge
Spare Room
Duff’s Garage
Original Halibut’s II
East End
Plew’s Brews
R O S S H A M I LT O N
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Fenix Project Blues Jam
The Grand Cafe
Thirsty Lion
1425 NW Glisan St. Tom Grant and Shelly Rudolph
Tualatin Heritage Center
8700 SW Sweek Drive Hanz Araki and Kathryn Claire
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. Gypsy Jazz Jam
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. 6bq9
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Ron Steen Trio with Belinda Underwood
THURS. JAN. 19 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. MBOMB, Duover
Alberta Rose Theatre
303 SW 12th Ave. MBOMB, RedRay Frazier
Alberta Street Public House
Doug Fir Lounge
1036 NE Alberta St. Open Mic
830 E Burnside St. The Milk Carton Kids, The Brendan Hines
Andina
Duff’s Garage
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Cadet, Mycelium, Lord, Darcy Pudding
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. The Doubleclicks, A Cat Called Grandpa, Paul Iannotti Group
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Stringed Migration
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Weekly Jazz Jam
1635 SE 7th Ave. Suburban Slim’s Blues Jam (9:30 pm); High Flyer Trio (6 pm)
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place C.C. Swim, Ugly Flowers, Bryan Minus
Goodfoot Lounge
Jimmy Mak’s
Mississippi Pizza
Kells
Mittleman Jewish Community Center
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Quartet 112 SW 2nd Ave. Cronin Tierney
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Pigeons, Nevele Nevele, Edna Vazquez
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Blvd. Park (9 pm); Green State (6 pm)
2845 SE Stark St. Early Hours, Ruby Feathers
Lents Commons
Holocene
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
1001 SE Morrison St. Waldteufel, DJ Cenobites
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant 1435 NW Flanders St.
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Billy D
9201 SE Foster Road Open Mic
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Tim Snider
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Solomon Klang
6651 SW Capitol Highway Gary Furlow and the Loafers
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Sleepy Eyed Johns
Music Millennium
3158 E Burnside St. Jackstraw
Palace of Industry
5426 N Gay Ave. Flat Rock String Band
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Dreizehn, Mentes Ajenas, Mycelium
Rotture
8132 SE 13th Ave. Open Mic
Touché Restaurant and Billiards
2346 SE Ankeny St. Jeffrree White Music Showcase
Fez Ballroom
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Jantar Mantar, Taint Misbehaving, Beef Hamilton, Town and the Writ, Stepper
2505 SE 11th Ave. The Low Bones
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. The Mazza-Calame Trio, The Dez Young Trio
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
714 SW 20th Place The Spun Monkey Patrol, Fingers Moen, Sister Lick
Red Room
Ford Food and Drink
Tony Starlight’s
Jade Lounge
Ella Street Social Club
8409 N Lombard St. Tim Snyder
The Know
71 SW 2nd Ave. The Nutmeggers
Ezra Weiss Trio
203 SE Grand Ave. Drunk Dad, Valkyrie Rodeo, DJ Party Dogg, DJ Booze Crooze
2527 NE Alberta St. Terry Robb
315 SE 3rd Ave. Lovers, Anaturale, Brittle Bones
2026 NE Alberta St. Worthless Eaters, Crawlin’
350 W Burnside St. Di Di Mau, Holy Children, Sexy Water Spiders, The Ex-Girlfriends Club, No Tomorrow Boys
1635 SE 7th Ave. Tough Love Pyle
3158 E Burnside St. Rags & Ribbons
316 SW 11th Ave. Jakalope, Left Spine Down, Dead When I Found Her
832 SE Grand Ave. Thief Scario, Mz Lala
Dante’s
8105 SE 7th Ave. Lauren Sheehan Duo
Music Millennium
13 NW 6th Ave. David J (of Bauhaus), Adrian H & The Wounds, Raymond Byron
WED. JAN. 18
Doug Fir Lounge
Muddy Rudder Public House
830 E Burnside St. The Pack A.D., My Goodness
Star Theater
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
350 W Burnside St. Buxter Hoot’n
125 NW 5th Ave. Larry Yes, Tito Ramsey, Memory Boys 4830 NE 42nd Ave. Dirk Powell & The Foghorn Trio
I DON’T ALWAYS PLAY THE BLUES, BUT WHEN I DO. . . : DK Stewart plays Duff’s Garage on Saturday.
Dante’s
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. The Giraffe Dodgers, Polecat, Brad Parsons
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Copy, Paper/Upper/Cuts, Vox Mod, Grapefruit
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
1435 NW Flanders St. The Dover Gailey Project (8:30 pm); Kerry Politzer (5:30 pm)
Jack London Bar
529 SW 4th Ave. Science Friction, Riley Parker, Curious Hands
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Colin Fisher Acoustic Oceans
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown B3 Organ Group
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Cronin Tierney
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Animal Eyes, Scrimshander, Plum Sutra
Kennedy School
5736 NE 33rd Ave. Sugarcane
3000 NE Alberta St. Ben Darwish & Shook Twins, John Heart Jackie, Local Strangers
Kenton Club
Andina
LaurelThirst
1314 NW Glisan St. Matices
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Smiley, Get Dressed; Rate of Rise; Fear of Flowers
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Murderbait, Shallow Seas, Weekend Assembly
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. Open Acoustic Jam (9:30 pm); Half-Step Shy (6 pm)
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Wednesday 13, Aiden, Modern Day Escape, Toxic Zombie, Deathrap America
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. John “JB” Butler & Al Craido
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. Bitterroot, Oreganic
Camellia Lounge
510 NW 11th Ave. Andrew Oliver Trio
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Warshers, Iron Lords, Jacktown Road 2958 NE Glisan St. Bingo Band (9:30 pm); Lewi Longmire Band (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Sonny Hess
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Billy Kennedy
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. Cyrille Aimée & Diego Figueiredo
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Sam Wegman (9 pm); The Bottlecap Boys (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. A Lull, Deleted Scenes, Ravenna Woods
Mock Crest Tavern
3435 N Lombard St. David Brothers
Sellwood Public House
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. The Morels
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. Mixer: Selectress Instigatah, Kez, Dirt Merchant, Mr. Romo
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Sam Densmore, Rachel Taylor Brown
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. Don’t, The Ransom
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
231 SW Ankeny St. Christopher Neil Young, Boy and Bean, Twisted Whistle, Ronnie Molen, Scotty Del, Will West
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. The Tom Grant Jazz Jam
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Alan Jones Jam
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Spectral Tombs, Disemballerina, Heathen Shrine
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Hair Assault
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Karaoke from Hell
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Porter Jones, Jokers and Jacks, Aron Schur Trio
Twilight Café and Bar
1420 SE Powell Blvd. Crooked Toad, The Mesa State
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Strange Babes, DJ Magic Beans, KM Fizzy, Jen O.
Vancouver Brickhouse 109 W 15th St., Vancouver, Wash. Jerome Kessinger
FRI. JAN. 20 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. MBOMB, Michael Jodell
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Peter Yarrow
Alberta Street Public House
1036 NE Alberta St. Balto, Barna Howard, Spitzer Space Telescope (9:30 pm); Mikey’s Irish Jam (6:30 pm)
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs Trio
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Wolfpussy, Attack Ships on Fire, Tomorrow’s Dream, Earth to Ashes
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Max Levine Ensemble, Rvivr, Divers, Andrew Link
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Style
Biddy McGraw’s
6000 NE Glisan St. The Jimmy Boyer Band (9:30 pm); Billy Kennedy (6 pm)
Bipartisan Cafe
7901 SE Stark St. Lisa and Her Kin Trio
Branx
320 SE 2nd Ave. Black Elk, Nether Regions, Rabbits, Wizard Rifle
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Tablao
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. The Sale
Bunk Bar
1028 SE Water Ave. Gardens and Villa, Hosannas, Aan
Burgerville (Hawthorne)
1122 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Flight 19 (Oregon Music Hall of Fame scholarships benefit)
Camellia Lounge
510 NW 11th Ave. David Friesen, John Gross
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Ocean 503
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Saucy Yoda
Doug Fir Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Rags & Ribbons, Water & Bodies, Fox and the Law
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Keeter Stuart and the Great Unknowns, The Hamdogs (9:30 pm); Paula Sinclar (6 pm)
East Burn
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
1800 E Burnside St. Left Coast Country
White Eagle Saloon
203 SE Grand Ave. Shallow Seas, Di Di Mau, Welsh Bowmen, DJ Cityrocker
2929 SE Powell Blvd. Brooks Robertson
836 N Russell St. Strangled Darlings (8:30 pm); Will West and Tanner Cundy (5:30 pm)
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Babara Lusch Trio
Wonder Ballroom
128 NE Russell St. Theophilus London, K Flay
East End
Ford Food and Drink 2505 SE 11th Ave. Katie Roberts (8 pm); Watertower (5 pm)
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge 1503 SE 39th Ave. Ron Rogers
CONT. on page 38 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
37
MUSIC
CALENDAR
BAR SPOTLIGHT ROSNAPS.COM
Andrea Hope (slam poetry Northwest Children’s Outreach benefit)
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Melodramus, Mosby, Ergot
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. The Greencarts, Evvnflo, Funktastik
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Tony Starlight, The Reece Marshburn Trio, Karla Harris, Bo & Barbara Ayars (Tony Starlight’s fifth anniversary)
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Rob Scheps and David Frishberg
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Rhombus, Social Graces
LUSH LIFE: Mark Simon’s head is shaped like a fishbowl. But then, I’m looking at the Portland pianist, between bites of my creamy Pacific Coast Seafood Pasta ($16.50), through the distorting lens of an oversized and underfunded tip jar on his baby grand. There are less than a dozen people scattered throughout Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant (1435 NW Flanders St., 241-6514) on this Thursday night, but Simon’s version of “Moonlight in Vermont” still bounces with an understated sort of pep. The stage looks like something you’d find at an outdoor wedding, but everything else about Ivories—the sleek black decor, the rolling garage doors, the food, the tap list, the attractive and exclusively female staff, the whipped-cream-topped spiced cinnamon cider ($7)—is so cozy that I barely notice. From my seat in the front, I can hear Simon’s trumpet player taking sharp breaths between his runs. Now that’s intimacy. Ivories hosts lively jams on Tuesdays, and there are some impressive national jazz bookings on the horizon. All it needs now is a packed house. CASEY JARMAN.
Vie de Boheme
1530 SE 7th Ave. King Beta
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. Terry Robb
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. Robert Holladay, Erin Leiker and Friends, Josh Cole Band (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
White Stag Building— UO Portland campus
70 NW Couch St. Pius Chang, Oregon Brass Quintet
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar 800 NW 6th Ave. Ed Bennett Trio
SAT. JAN. 21 15th Avenue Hophouse 1517 NE Brazee St. Rogue Bluegrass Band
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel Hawthorne Theatre 3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Andy Grammer, Ryan Star, Rachel Platten
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
1435 NW Flanders St. Pete Petersen, Carlton Jackson, Eric Gruber and Jim Templeton (8:30 pm); Mark Simon (5:30 pm)
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Class M Planets (8 pm); Russell Thomas (6 pm)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. FunBus!, The Jacob Merlin Band
Katie O’ Brien’s
2809 NE Sandy Blvd. Thulsa Dome, This Fair City, Blood Owl
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. St. James Gate
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Hema, Ill Lucid Onset, Sleepwalk Kid
Kenton Club
2025 N Kilpatrick St. Carnabetian Army, Metropolitan Farms, Queued Up
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Pagan Jug Band (9:30 pm); Sassparilla (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale John Bunzow
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro The Old Yellers
38
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Melao d’Cuba (9 pm); The Hill Dogs (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Joey Porter (Stevie Wonder tribute)
Mock Crest Tavern
3435 N Lombard St. The Student Loan
Mount Tabor Theater
Slim’s Cocktail Bar 8635 N Lombard St. Ruby Feathers, The Darlin’ Blackbird
Someday Lounge
125 NW 5th Ave. The Druthers, Peter Rodocker, Tyler Stenson, Fanno Creek
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. HiFi Mojo
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Anthony B, Indubious, Jagga Culture. Small Axe Sound, Steve Treez
Star E Rose
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Mike Brosnan
231 SW Ankeny St. Philly’s Phunkestra, Eldridge Gravy and the Court Supreme, Pocket
Nel Centro
The Bing Lounge
1408 SW 6th Ave. Mike Pardew with Scott Steed
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe 4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Duffy Bishop
Plan B
2403 NE Alberta St. Outside Voices
Ted’s (at Berbati’s)
1210 SW 6th Ave. The Hugs
The Blue Diamond
2016 NE Sandy Blvd. Norman Sylvester
The Foggy Notion
3416 N Lombard St. Hauksness, Haterade, The Man Dies
The Know
1305 SE 8th Ave. Axxicorn, Goddess
2026 NE Alberta St. Diesto, Pinkzilla, Towers, DJ Druid, DJ Decapod
Press Club
The Space
2621 SE Clinton St. James Low and Lewi Longmire
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. R.R.B.C, Go Ballistic, Roadkill Carnivore, Ace of Spades, The Outer Space Heaters
Secret Society Lounge 116 NE Russell St. Underscore Orkestra (9 pm); AnnaPaul & The Bearded Lady (6 pm)
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
9970 SW BeavertonHillsdale Highway, Beaverton Erik Anarchy, Patria, Jodida, Stepper, Wild Dogs, Danny Christ, Chase the Shakes
Thirsty Lion
71 SW 2nd Ave. Erotic City
Three Friends Coffeehouse
201 SE 12th Ave.
303 SW 12th Ave. MBOMB, James Low
Aladdin Theater
3017 SE Milwaukie Ave. Jake Shimabukuro
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Renegade Saints, Haymaker
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. How Long Jug Band (9:30 pm); Keep Your Fork, There’s Pie, Jeff Campbell, Brad Brooks (6:30 pm)
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Toshi Onizuka Trio
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. Village Idiot, Dirtnap, Ratpriest
Dante’s
Muddy Rudder Public House
Doug Fir Lounge
Nel Centro
Elite 350 W Burnside St. Pigs on the Wing 830 E Burnside St. Youth Lagoon, Pure Bathing Culture
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. DK Stewart Sextet
Eagles Lodge, Southeast
4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Jeffrey Broussard Zydeco Band
East Burn
1800 E Burnside St. Bottleneck Blues Band
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Sons of Huns, Belt of Vapor, Wizard Rifle
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Adam Arcuragi, Ruby Feathers, Jenn Rawling
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Wayne Horvitz, Joe Doria, Bobby Previte, Tim Young
Hawthorne Hophouse
4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Bitter Root
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
1503 SE 39th Ave. Destroy Nate Allen, The Darkest Moons, Kat Jones
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The All-American Rejects
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant
1435 NW Flanders St. David Friesen (8:30 pm); Frank Tribble (5:30 pm)
Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. The Begonias (8 pm); Ronno Rutter (6 pm)
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. Sista Monica Parker
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. St. James Gate
Brasserie Montmartre 626 SW Park Ave. Boy & Bean (9 pm); Tablao (5:30 pm)
Buffalo Gap Saloon
6835 SW Macadam Ave. This Not This
Camellia Lounge 510 NW 11th Ave. Tabor Jazz Trio
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd.
Oregon Historical Society 1200 SW Park Ave. Tinmantle
Original Halibut’s II 2527 NE Alberta St. Margo Tufo
Plan B
1305 SE 8th Ave. Bell Witch, Aerial Ruin, Taurus, Violence of Humanity
Plew’s Brews
8409 N Lombard St. Basketball Jones, Boardertown
Press Club
2621 SE Clinton St. Ritchie Young (of Loch Lomond) and The Brothers Young
Project Grow
2156 N Williams Ave. Arrington de Dionyso, Larkin Grimm, Malaikat Dan Singa, Scout Niblett
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. Duover, Bob Ham, DJ Lorax
Red Room
2530 NE 82nd Ave. Iron Circus, Gladius, Livid Minds, Psychosynapsys, Dethroner
Refuge
116 SE Yamhill St. Ana Sia, David Starfire, Vokab Kompany, Pumpkin, Solovox, Marv Ellis, Global Ruckus, Bridgetown Revue, Athena Aura Nova, The Good Time Girls, JPeace Love Circus, The Geek Fort, The Puzzle Players (Portland Artists Clinic benefit)
Secret Society Lounge
Touché Restaurant and Billiards 1425 NW Glisan St. Kelley Shannon Trio
Twilight Café and Bar 1420 SE Powell Blvd. Stolen Rose, Manx
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. AngelRhodes
White Eagle Saloon
2958 NE Glisan St. Water Tower Bucket Band, Renegade Stringband (9:30 pm); Tree Frogs (6 pm)
8635 N Lombard St. No Tomorrow Boys, Johnny Payola’s Hayride, Steer Crazy
Lents Commons
125 NW 5th Ave. Ninja, Holy Children, Kaleido Skull
9201 SE Foster Road The Hand That Bleeds, Last Prick Standing, Pecos
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Rule of the Bone
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Weekend Assembly (6 pm); The Alphabeticians (4 pm)
Mississippi Studios
Someday Lounge
Spare Room
4830 NE 42nd Ave. Cool Breeze
TaborSpace
5441 SE Belmont St. Padam Padam
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. Bigfoot County
The Foggy Notion 3416 N Lombard St. Mike Brown
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. New York Rifles, Objects in Space, Red Ships of Spain
The Lovecraft
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Joey Porter (Stevie Wonder tribute)
421 SE Grand Ave. The Xploding Boys (Cure tribute, Lovecraft oneyear anniversary)
Mock Crest Tavern
Thirsty Lion
3435 N Lombard St. Johnnie Ward Sharkskin Review
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Pimps of Joytime
71 SW 2nd Ave. Jonny Smokes
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway The Fun Police
Mission Theater
1624 NW Glisan St. School of Rock: Pink Floyd
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Treacle Foot Stomp, Hush, Hush Smut Club (9 pm); Lazy Champions (6 pm)
Mississippi Studios
3939 N Mississippi Ave. Johnny A.
Mount Tabor Theater
4811 SE Hawthorne Blvd. The Sindicate
Music Millennium
800 NW 6th Ave. Mia Nicholson Trio
SUN. JAN. 22 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. A Simple Colony, Sarah King, Dave Camp
Alberta Rose Theatre
3000 NE Alberta St. Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Danny Romero
Ash Street Saloon
225 SW Ash St. AlbinoGorilla, [ed]edible, Dee Jay Evol, Danceahol
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Bad Music and Kingnik
Clyde’s Prime Rib
5474 NE Sandy Blvd. Ron Steen Jazz Jam
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W Burnside St. 2012 Portland Music Awards: Kandles At Nine, Robbie Laws Band, Brad Parsons, Portland Gay Men’s Choir
Ella Street Social Club
LaurelThirst
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Hanz Araki & Kathryn Claire
Wilfs Restaurant and Bar
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
2025 N Kilpatrick St. The Quags, The Schills
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
Muddy Rudder Public House
Kenton Club
Slabtown
Billy Kennedy and Jason Ocamoto
836 N Russell St. Porches, Violet Isle (9:30 pm); The Student Loan (4:30 pm)
Doug Fir Lounge
Biddy McGraw’s
320 SE 2nd Ave. In Her Memory, I Reckon, Gaia, Asleep at Last, Honey Badger, American Girls
4627 NE Fremont St. Traditional Hawaiian Music
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Tony Starlight, The All-Star Horns (Tony Starlight’s fifth anniversary)
1033 NW 16th Ave. Blue Iris, The Tomorrow People, Bubble Cats
426 SW Washington St. The Eiger Sanction, A Volcano, Growler
The Mustachioed Bandits and the Damsel in Distress
Branx
Noho’s Hawaiian Cafe
Tony Starlight’s
Kelly’s Olympian
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
6000 NE Glisan St. Power of Country (9:30 pm); The Barkers (6 pm)
1408 SW 6th Ave. Mike Pardew with Scott Steed
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S., Muddy River Nightmare Band, The Burning Bridges, Notches, Isolated Cases
116 NE Russell St. The Tezeta Band (9 pm); Shicky Gnarowitz (6 pm)
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Facho & Friends
8105 SE 7th Ave. Steve Cheseborough
Tonic Lounge
830 E Burnside St. Augustana, Graffiti 6 714 SW 20th Place Stellar’s Jay, Butter, Light Creates Shadow
Hawthorne Theatre Lounge
1503 SE 39th Ave. Rest^vRant, Hurricane Henry Hill Kammerer, Woodbrain
Hawthorne Theatre
3862 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Allstar Weekend, The After Party, Hollywood Ending, Before You Exit
8105 SE 7th Ave. Irish Music
3158 E Burnside St. Naomi LaViolette
NEPO 42
5403 NE 42nd Ave. Open Mic
O’Connor’s Vault 7850 SW Capitol Highway Midnight Sun Jazz Quartet
Rontoms
600 E Burnside St. Youth, Chairs Missing, Still Caves
The Blue Monk
3341 SE Belmont St. The Supraphonics
The Know
2026 NE Alberta St. Creamers, Vicious Pleasures
Tonic Lounge
3100 NE Sandy Blvd. Marmits, Flesh Lawn, Lunar Grave, Wolf in the Dream Catcher
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. Jefferttitti’s Nile, Jason Urick, Tunnels, Million Mists
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar 2929 SE Powell Blvd. The Blueprints
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Open Mic
MON. JAN. 23 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel 303 SW 12th Ave. A Simple Colony, Into November
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Mike Brown
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. Pete Krebs Trio
Jade Lounge
Ash Street Saloon
Kells
Backspace
2346 SE Ankeny St. Joaquin Lopez 112 SW 2nd Ave. Danny O (9 pm); Irish Sessions (7 pm)
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. Sleep Villain, Starving Architect, Incredible Yacht Control
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Billy Kennedy & Tim Acott with Jake Ray (9:30 pm); Freak Mountain Ramblers (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery 2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale
225 SW Ash St. Open Mic with DJ Streetz 115 NW 5th Ave. Battery-Powered Music
Dante’s
350 W Burnside St. Karaoke from Hell
Duff’s Garage
1635 SE 7th Ave. Freewill
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Axxicorn vs. Towers (Portland Metal Winter Olympics)
Ella Street Social Club 714 SW 20th Place Cassowaries
Goodfoot Lounge 2845 SE Stark St. Open Mic
CALENDAR Jade Lounge
2346 SE Ankeny St. Salon de Musique
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Dan Balmer Band
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Danny O
Kelly’s Olympian
426 SW Washington St. David Gerow
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Kung Pao Chickens (9 pm); Portland Country Underground (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Skip vonKuske with Rena Jones
McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern
10000 Old Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro Bob Shoemaker
Mississippi Pizza
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Selfish Team, PK Thunder (9 pm); Bluegrass Jam (6:30 pm); Mr. Ben (5 pm)
Muddy Rudder Public House 8105 SE 7th Ave. Lloyd Jones
Roseland Theater
8 NW 6th Ave. NOFX, Old Man Markle, Poison Idea
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Metal Monday
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. La Pump, Lavender Mirror, Secret Century
White Eagle Saloon
836 N Russell St. The Resolectrics, Duover, Lewi Longmire
TUES. JAN. 24 15th Avenue Hophouse
1517 NE Brazee St. Steve Cheseborough
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. A Simple Colony, Mexican Gunfight
Alberta Street Public House 1036 NE Alberta St. Station to Station, My Oh My’s, Ezra Holbrook
Andina
1314 NW Glisan St. JB Butler
Ash Street Saloon 225 SW Ash St. JAMF, AC Lov Ring, Klogr
Backspace
115 NW 5th Ave. Shouter, Charming Birds, Go Van Go
Beaterville Cafe
2201 N Killingsworth St. Open Mic
Bunk Bar
East End
203 SE Grand Ave. Psychomania!
Ella Street Social Club
714 SW 20th Place Bath Party, Shapes, Timmy the Terror & The Winter Coats, Free Weed
Goodfoot Lounge
2845 SE Stark St. Scott PembertonTrio
Hawthorne Hophouse 4111 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Ches James
Ivories Jazz Lounge and Restaurant 1435 NW Flanders St. Jazz Jam with Carey Campbell
Jimmy Mak’s
221 NW 10th Ave. The Mel Brown Septet (8 pm); The Journey Collective (6:30 pm)
Kells
112 SW 2nd Ave. Danny O
LaurelThirst
2958 NE Glisan St. Bingo (9 pm); Jackstraw (6 pm)
McMenamins Edgefield Winery
1028 SE Water Ave. Michael the Blind, The Siren and the Sea, Rogue Valley
2126 SW Halsey St., Troutdale Caleb Klauder and Sammy Lind
Camellia Lounge
Mississippi Pizza
510 NW 11th Ave. Ezra Weiss Quartet (Chaka Khan tribute)
3552 N Mississippi Ave. Lost Creek Bluegrass Band
Duff’s Garage
Plan B
1635 SE 7th Ave. Dover Weinberg Quartet (9:30 pm); Trio Bravo (6 pm)
The Crown Room
Roseland Theater
205 NW 4th Ave. Blast: Cedaa, Dr. Riz, Spekt1, Lava Machete
8 NW 6th Ave. Fitz and the Tantrums, American Tomahawk, Reva Devito
Star Theater
WED. JAN. 18
The Blue Monk
Thirsty Lion
tickets at TicketsOregon.com
31 NW 1st Ave. Jamie Meushaw, Evan Alexander, Tyler Hart
Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Krillim
Tiger Bar
317 NW Broadway Sarah Moon and the Night Sky
The Whiskey Bar
Tony Starlight’s
3728 NE Sandy Blvd. Ayars Vocal Showcase
Tiga
Twilight Café and Bar
1465 NE Prescott St. DJ Blackwell
1420 SE Powell Blvd. Open Mic with The Roaming
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. DJ Ramophone
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. White Rainbow, Charles Berlitz Presents the Garnet Tucan, Caspar Sonnet, Rene Hell
THURS. JAN. 19 Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
Vino Vixens Wine Shop & Bar
303 SW 12th Ave. DJ Anjali & The Incredible Kid
2929 SE Powell Blvd. Arthur “Fresh Air” Moore Harmonica Party
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. The Keep On!: Blackbars, Danyak
White Eagle Saloon 836 N Russell St. Time and Bell, Jacob Arnold, Mikah Sykes
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. Landau Boyz
Palace of Industry 5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Philadelphia Freedom
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. DJ MisPrid
Since 1974
Never a cover!
1465 NE Prescott St. Hostile Tapeover
The Whiskey Bar 31 NW 1st Ave. Juice: Dave Owen, Aquasion
Valentine’s
232 SW Ankeny St. The New Dadz DJ
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Cowboys from Sweden
SUN. JAN. 22 Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJ Bob Ham
232 SW Ankeny St. AV Club: Cool Joel C, Sister Sister
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
303 SW 12th Ave. Standing 8
Tube
Aalto Lounge
18 NW 3rd Ave. Honky Tonk Happy Hour with Tennessee Tim
Al’s Den at the Crystal Hotel
Tiga
Fez Ballroom
Tube
SAT. JAN. 21
Beauty Bar
111 SW Ash St. Jet Set: DJs 100 Proof, Swervewon, DJ Computer Fam
Groove Suite 440 NW Glisan St. Trifecta
Ground Kontrol
511 NW Couch St. DJs MT3, Raw
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Rockbox: Matt Nelkin, DJ Kez, Dundiggy (9 pm); Soft Rock Happy Hour with Kendall Holladay (5 pm)
Palace of Industry 5426 N Gay Ave. DJ Holiday
3356 SE Belmont St DJ Fuzzprobe
MON., JAN. 23 1465 NE Prescott St. Todos Santos
303 SW 12th Ave. DJ Stargazer
18 NW 3rd Ave. DJ Toilet Love
316 SW 11th Ave. Red Bull Thre3style: DJ Nature, Doc Adam, Nick Dean, Tyler Tastemaker, DJ FlipFlop, DJ Zimmie, Juggernaut, DJ Playtime
TUES. JAN. 24 Star Bar
639 SE Morrison St. DJ Bradley
Holocene
1001 SE Morrison St. Gaycation: DJ Snowtiger, Mr. Charming
The Lovecraft
421 SE Grand Ave. Death Club with DJ Entropy
Rotture
Record Room
8 NE Killingsworth St. DJ Nealie Neal
Rotture
Tiga
Valentine’s
FRI. JAN. 20
31 NW 1st Ave. Whiskey Wednesdays: Imade, Heatesca, Danny K, Josh Burns
421 SE Grand Ave. DJs Paradox, Horrid, James
315 SE 3rd Ave. Gray Matters, DJ Flip Flop, Speaker Minds
315 SE 3rd Ave. Bearracuda with DJ Freddy King of Pants
Tiga
1465 NE Prescott St. Joan Hiller
Star Bar
Tube
639 SE Morrison St. Go French Yourself! with DJ Cecilia Paris
18 NW 3rd Ave. Tubesday (10 pm); DJ Dirty Red (7 pm)
The Crown Room 205 NW 4th Ave.
PARTY BY THE PORT in the
HEART OF THE CITY Buffalo gap Wednesday, January 18th • 9pm
local Music Showcase
Thursday, January 19th • 9pm
Bitterroot & oreganic
FRIDAY, JANUARY 27th
(folk jam band)
Naomi LaViolette Upper Left Trio
friday, January 20th • 9pm
DOUBLE CD RELEASE EVENT SATURDAY, JANUARY 28
18 NW 3rd Ave. Fast Weapons Night: DJs Nate Preston, Linoleum
8635 N Lombard St. DJ Benny Utah
71 SW 2nd Ave. PX Singer-Songwriter Showcase
20 FUNBUS! The Jacob Merlin Band
Sista Monica Parker “The Lioness of the Blues”
Tube
Slim’s Cocktail Bar
th
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21th
1465 NE Prescott St. Kev It Up
203 SE Grand Ave. DJ Smooth Hopperator
3341 SE Belmont St. Pagan Jug Band
“One of the world’s top 100 places to hear jazz” - Downbeat Magazine
FRIDAY, JANUARY
Tiga
East End
1305 SE 8th Ave. Roselit Bone, The Notches
JIMMY MAK’S
The Whiskey Bar
The Lovecraft
13 NW 6th Ave. Concrete Blonde, Menkena
MUSIC
Club Crooks: Izm, Easter Egg, Mr. Marcus
th
Soul Vaccination COMING SOON!
Peter White with Patrick Lamb, FEB. 1 Bobby Broom & the Deep Blue Organ Trio, FEB. 9 Mon-Sat. evenings: Dinner from 5 pm, Music from 8 pm 221 NW 10th • 503-295-6542 • jimmymaks.com
The Sale (folk soul reggae)
Saturday, January 21st • 9pm
This Not This CD Release party (pop rock)
Sunday, January 22nd
fanattic
“all your Nfl favorites” doors open 9:30am
Norman Sylvester plays!
Opening night
at our haunt by the river
Tuesday, January 24th • 9pm
8 pm Friday, Jan. 27
Hosted By: Scott gallegos
DotCom Bar & Restaurant
open Mic WIN $50!!!
6835 SW Macadam Ave | John’s Landing
Full Bar, Great Kitchen • 3075 NW Front • 503-471-9999 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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MONDAY-TUESDAY
MONDAY, JAN. 23
PROFILE JACQUI RAE
MUSIC
NOFX, Old Man Markle, Poison Idea
[MIDLIFE-CRISIS PUNK] After hearing the same jokes recycled ad nauseam for close to 30 years, there’s little left to say about skatepunk lifers NOFX. Although the band’s music has gotten tighter and catchier over the decades, it’s also somehow become more superfluous. If there’s anything interesting about NOFX at this point, it’s the way the group seems to be fighting an innate urge to finally give in to maturity. During the Bush administration, the band suddenly became politicized, but its commentary went only as deep as calling the president an “Idiot Son of an Asshole.” In recent years, singer-bassist “Fat” Mike Burkett has dabbled in performance art with a character called Cokie the Clown, but the height of his “art” was getting banned from an Austin club for pretending to trick audience members into drinking his own urine. And on NOFX’s last album, 2009’s Coaster, Burkett buffered songs about addiction and the death of his parents with tunes celebrating drunkenness and Iron Maiden. At some point, you either have to grow up or call it quits, and NOFX doesn’t seem to know how to do either. MATTHEW SINGER. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8 pm. $25. All ages.
TUESDAY, JAN. 24 Fitz and the Tantrums, American Tomahawk, Reva Devito
[ORGAN DONORS] America is thankful that Michael Fitzpatrick impulsively bought a $50 church organ from a garage sale a few years back. The Fitz and the Tantrums frontman has been building around it ever since, crossing the strengthin-numbers soulfulness of Booker T. and the M.G.’s with the grooving piano charm of early Stevie Wonder. Many tout the L.A. band’s James Brown-esque work ethic, and the proof is in 2010 full-length Pickin’ up the Pieces. Despite the occasional dragging duet, the retro-fixated record shows explosive Memphis soul and rich R&B elements not seen in full since the ’60s. CASEY JARMAN. Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., 224-2038. 8 pm. $18.50$25. All ages.
Concrete Blonde, Menkena
[BLOND AMBITION] If the recent release of the 2012 Coachella lineup weren’t indication enough that the ’90s are back in full force, how about the resurrection of Concrete Blonde? The L.A.-based art-rock trio managed to crack the Billboard Top 20 in 1990 with “Joey,” a stillaffecting plea to an alcoholic lover. The years have seen the band wax and wane in the 20 years since that success, but Concrete Blonde is treading the boards once more with new material in tow. A self-released two-song 7-inch finds the group brandishing its same desert-baked spirit and, on “I Know the Ghost,” some punkish attitude to boot.. ROBERT HAM. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. 9 pm. $25 advance, $30 day of show. 21+.
Sarah Moon and the Night Sky
[BLUES ROCK] Sarah Moon has the kind of vocal prowess that transitions beautifully between velvet old-school jazz, classic-rock growls and bluesy balladry. Alone, she’s a dynamo. But paired with the threepiece Night Sky, Moon becomes a powerhouse, with the tightknit pocket musicians augmenting her wail into the stratosphere. The Portland group, which has been making the rounds seemingly incognito for years now, isn’t aiming to break new ground. Rather, the quartet has found solid footing in classic blues-based rock, hammered home with a mastery of genre conventions. AP KRYZA. Tiger Bar, 317 NW Broadway, 222-7297. 9 pm. Cover. 21+.
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Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
SPECTRAL TOMBS THURSDAY, JAN. 19 If you’re going to be a nihilist, be an all-the-way nihilist.
[METAL] Spectral Tombs don’t look much like they enjoy being interviewed. Though three-fourths of the black-metal band—bassist-vocalist Chris Carter, guitarist-vocalist John Edwards and drummer Mark Nunziata (second guitarist Justin Kay was at his job cooking at a vegan restaurant)—gladly agreed to join me at Hilt on Northeast Alberta Street, all three carry themselves as if they had just been called into the principal’s office or the interrogation room at the local cop shop. To that end, they choose their words carefully. When asked about being part of a thriving metal scene that is getting national attention, the rail-thin, soft-spoken Carter stiffens up slightly and stares into his whiskey for a full minute before saying, “I definitely feel like there’s a high caliber of good bands here, but I also feel like there’s a high amount of not very good bands that get by on the basis of popularity and just who they know.” It’s a ballsy statement, but I would expect nothing less from Carter. His nihilistic lyrics foresee the end of all humanity, and—as he wails on “Noli Timere” (Latin for “be not afraid”), a track from the quartet’s newly released album, Carrion—his own “hatred, disgust, growing sickness towards life.” At least, that’s what I grabbed from the lyrics sheet. As is typical of most black metal, Spectral Tombs’ vocals—traded off between Edwards’ low growl and the high screech of Carter—can often be indecipherable. I suggested as much to the band, wondering whether getting across the message of the lyrics was harder because they were so difficult to understand when sung. Carter bristled at the idea. “The vocals are a part of the aesthetic,” he said. “I don’t think we can do away with that aesthetic. If the people care enough to read the lyrics, then they’ll know what we’re talking about. And if you listen close enough, I sing clearly enough, even with the screaming, you can understand what I mean.” What is easily comprehensible with Spectral Tombs is how much of themselves the members put into their music, especially when it comes to live performances. The band’s brutal instrumental attack is almost symphonic in its smooth transition from slow melodic passages to furious blast beats and strumming. But, as any good metal band should, the quartet thrashes about the stage, headbanging and getting completely lost in the swell of the music. The effect is absolute catharsis, leaving everyone—especially the band—spent by the end. “It’s definitely draining,” Carter says. “It’s like, stop playing, break down the shit, and get away from people.” Maybe that’s why Carter, Edwards and Nunziata look so pained at the idea of explaining their band’s sound and approach to anyone, let alone a writer. Spectral Tombs pour everything— frustrations at the Portland metal scene, fury at the state of the world—out onstage, pushing their physical limitations in the process. What more need be said? ROBERT HAM. SEE IT: Spectral Tombs play the Know, 2026 NE Alberta St., on Thursday, Jan. 19, with Disemballerina and Heathen Shrine. 8 pm. Cover. 21+.
JAN. 18-24
Fully Loaded Russian Roulette
= 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.
FERTILE GROUND FESTIVAL The festival of world-premiere theater
and dance returns for its fourth year, with more than 100 full productions, readings and workshops taking place all over the city during the course of 10 days. Fertile Ground productions . Multiple venues. are marked with a Friday, Jan. 19-Sunday, Jan. 29. Full festival pass $50 at fertilegroundpdx. org, individual tickets vary.
THEATER Ablaze
Playwrights West presents the most intriguing performance of the Fertile Ground Festival: a staged concert of Matthew B. Zrebski’s a cappella musical about a group of 23 teenagers trapped in a basement for 19 days by an unknown predator. The musical horror story is performed by 23 teens from Wilson High School. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 2202646. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 20-22. $15.
Asylum No More
Penplay premieres Sandra de Helen’s new play about Tee Rose Jackson, an African-American nurse who saves white women from being lobotomized. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., fertilegroundpdx.org. 11 pm Friday-Saturday, Jan. 20-21. $12.
At Home at the Zoo
After writing The Zoo Story in 1958, Edward Albee worried he had created a 1-and-half character play rather than a two-character one, with the voluble Jerry overshadowing the mild, quiet Peter. Nearly 50 years later, Albee penned a new one-act, a sort of prologue to his earlier play, to flesh out Peter and to introduce his restless wife, Ann. At Profile Theatre, Pat Patton directs the combined work, a gripping, unsettling and darkly comic production. The first act, a spare yet revealing conversation between Peter (Don Alder) and Ann (Karla Mason), is something of an intellectual exercise. The second act, a volatile encounter between Peter and Jerry (a frenetic but commanding James Sharinghousen), is less meta and more visceral, but no less calculated. At Home at the Zoo proves both fascinating and vexing. Viewers may disagree if Albee did right to unite the two acts, but no one expects Albee to comfort or coddle, and in this light, Profile Theatre succeeds.REBECCA JACOBSON. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 242-0080. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Jan. 29. $16-$30.
B’aktun 13
B’aktun 13, a bilingual Miracle Theatre production written by Portland playwright Dañel Malán, explores the prediction that a drastic world shift will take place when the Mayan long count calendar comes to an end on Dec. 21, 2012. While the spiritual side of the ancient prophecy fills plenty of space along the plotline, Malán also ties in contemporary issues of immigration, assimilation and identity that hit even more powerfully and poignantly than the thought of a world that may be no more. Themes of acceptance and unification unfold to remedy the impending doomsday through a narrative of three main characters after they are deported from the U.S. to Mexico. In this case, the passing of the 13th B’aktun doesn’t necessarily mean the end. Instead, it marks the breakdown of borders and the beginning of a new understanding of social constructions and the natural world. EMILEE BOOHER. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7:30 pm Thursday, 8 pm Friday, 2 and 8 pm Saturday, Jan. 19-21. $12-$24.
Back Fence PDX
Stories on the theme of “I didn’t think this through” from photographer Carli Davidson, auctioneer David Silverman, construction estimator Doug Askelson, Whiffies Fried Pies owner Gregg Abbott, bigfoot enthusiast Laurie Notaro and comedian Mary Van Note. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., backfencejan2012.eventbrite.com. 8 pm Monday, Jan. 23. Free.
The Belle of Amherst
Jane Fellows performs William Luce’s one-woman show about Emily Dickinson for New Century Players. Ainsworth House and Gardens, 19130 Lot Whitcomb Drive, newcenturyplayers.org. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 20-22. $12-$18.
Big Plastic Heroes
A pair of solo performances about childhood heroes: in Teenage Commando, Portland comedian Augi describes his teenage yearning to be Rambo; in Last American Gladiator Part 3, New Yorker Slash Coleman recounts his youthful obsession with Evel Knievel and his thirdgrade teacher, with dire consequences. In between, Portlanders tell their own stories of misplaced childhood heroes. Sanctuary at Sandy Plaza, 1785 NE Sandy Blvd., 804-353-3799. 7:30 pm Jan. 21, 26-28 and Feb. 3-4. $15-$17.50.
Bite Me a Little
Playwright and composer Arlie Conner presents a concert preview of his new vampire-romance musical comedy, featuring “16 songs for seven actors and a gypsy-jazz combo.” Mississippi Studios, 3939 N Mississippi Ave., bitemealittle.com. 8 pm Monday-Tuesday, Jan. 23-24. $20. 21+.
Deadly Murder
Lakewood Theatre presents a thriller by David Foley: A wealthy Manhattanite (Camille Dargus) picks up a waiter (Ty Boice) for the evening, but when he won’t leave her apartment, she calls in her security guard (Leif Norby) to throw him out. Intrigue ensues. Lakewood Center for the Arts, 368 S State St., Lake Oswego, 6353901. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays; 7 pm Sundays Jan. 22-29; 2 pm Sundays Jan. 22-Feb. 19. $28, $25 seniors.
Dear Galileo
A staged reading of Portlander Claire Willett’s new play about fathers and daughters stressed by science: Galileo’s daughter facing the prospect of her father defying the pope again; a creationist writer’s daughter falling in love with science; and the estranged daughter of a missing astrophysicist. Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 2 pm Saturday, Jan. 21 and 7:30 pm Monday, Jan. 23. $10 suggested donation.
Famished
Portland Playhouse premieres a new work by Portland playwright Eugenia Woods—an experimental docu-drama about our relationship with food. Traditionalists, don’t let that description deter you—Famished has a great cast and a good director (Megan Kate Ward). Imago Theatre, 17 SE 8th Ave., 205-0715. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 5. $12-$23.
Fight Call
A musical comedy sendup of murder mysteries, Shakespeare and theatrical superstition by brothers Billy and Steve Rathje, who are 19 and 16 years old, respectively. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., chooseculture. org/event?id=164885. 2 pm Saturdays, Jan. 21 and 28, at the CoHo, and 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 29 at Vanport Studio, 5229 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Suite 102. $10 suggested donation.
Contagious Theatre and Gorilla Bomb Productions present six shorts by Portland young playwrights. The Hostess, 538 SE Ash St., fertilegroundpdx.org. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2:30 pm Sundays. Closes Jan. 29. $10.
Grand Guignol 4: Psychosis
Third Eye Theatre presents another installment of its gory series in the style of the French theater of terror. This round features a faith healer, a filthy room, a roofie and a jealous husband. Kenton Masonic Lodge, 8130 N Denver Ave., 970-8874. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays, 7 pm Sundays. 8 pm Thursday, Jan. 19. No show Jan. 20 and 28. Closes Feb. 12. $12-$15.
Hamlet
Northwest Classical Theatre gets rotten in Denmark for the third time since 2003. Shoe Box Theater, 2110 SE 10th Ave., 971-244-3740. 7:30 pm Thursday-Saturday, 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 19-22. $18-$20.
the playwright Mikhail Bulgakov, starring Alex Jennings and Simon Russell Beale. World Trade Center Theater, 121 SW Salmon St., 235-1101. 2 and 7 pm Saturday, Jan. 21. $20, $15 students.
Near to the Wild Heart
Amber Whitehall performs her new “dance monologue,” a “love poem to anxiety,” based on the lives and words of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and other female artists. Conduit Dance , 918 SW Yamhill St., Suite 401, amberwhitehall.com. 8 pm Thursday-Sunday, Jan. 19-22. $15.
A Noble Failure
CoHo Productions presents a staged reading of the winner of the company’s NewXNW Competition. The play, by Portland’s Susan Mach, recounts the troubling fallout of a public school that
is converted in a test-score-obsessed, for-profit corporation. The CoHo Theater, 2257 NW Raleigh St., 503205-0715. 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 22 and 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 29. Tickets are “pay what you will.”
Oil Change the Musical Comedy
Brent and Klay Rogers present a work-in-progress staging of their new musical about love at the NASCAR track. Broadway Rose New Stage Theatre, 12850 SW Grant Ave., Tigard, boxofficetickets.com/OilChange. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday and 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 20-22 at Broadway Rose. 7:30 pm Friday-Saturday, Jan. 27-28 at Portland Actors Conservatory, 1436 SW Montgomery St. $10.
CONT. on page 42
REVIEW OWEN CAREY
PERFORMANCE
Hunter Gatherers
The reunion begins with a sacrifice. Milquetoast computer programmer Pam (Kerry Ryan) arrives home to find her metalworker-novelist husband, Richard (Mario Calcagno), preparing a lamb for slaughter in the middle of their living room. Their high-school friends Wendy (Brooke Fletcher) and Tom (Joel Harmon), with whom they shared a double wedding and terrible secrets, are coming to celebrate their mutual anniversary, and this dinner will be very special. In Hunter Gatherers, San Francisco playwright Peter Sinn Nachtrieb joins the spate of plays exposing the hidden savagery of modern life tops them all. His characters are not merely shown to be hypocrites—in 90 minutes, they devolve into a state of near-incoherent paleolithic savagery. The show has a little something for everyone: For foodies, there’s roast lamb; for action fans, there’s light maiming; for Europeans, there’s sex; and for Stieg Larsson readers and Rick Santorum voters, there’s even some anal rape. Theatre Vertigo’s finest productions have been chaotic, absurdist farces, and this one is no exception. Director Tom Moorman and his cast exploit every possible sight gag, every insult and outburst and every opportunity for gross-out excess. I don’t know there’s much great art to be found in the sight of Calcagno and Fletcher feeding feverishly on a whole roast lamb, but I haven’t laughed so hard in the theater all season. Theater! Theatre!, 3430 SE Belmont St., 306-0870. 8 pm Thursdays-Saturdays. Closes Feb. 4. $15. Thursdays are “pay what you will.”
Cafe Baghdad
Jewish Theatre Collaborative presents four staged readings of a new play by Sacha Reich about life in Jewish Baghdad in 1928. Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th Ave., jewishteatrecollaborative. org. 7 pm Monday, Jan. 23 at Someday Lounge; Tuesday, Jan. 24 at Hoda’s, 3401 SE Belmont St.; Wednesday, Jan. 25 at Lewis & Clark College Smith Hall, 615 SW Palatine Hill Road; and Monday, Jan. 30 at Food for Thought Cafe in PSU’s Smith Memorial Student Union, 1825 SW Broadway. $10.
Love Scenes
Nicole Accuardi directs a play by her sister, Sara Jean Accuardi, of scenes inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 2242227. 8 pm Thursday and 7:30 pm Monday, Jan. 19 and 23. $10.
The Magic School Bus Live: The Climate Challenge
Oregon Children’s Theatre sends Ms. Frizzle and the gang around the world to learn about global climate change. Newmark Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway, 228-9571. 2 and 5 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 19. $13-$30.
National Theatre Live: Collaborators
Third Rail screens the latest show from London’s National Theatre: John Hodge’s new drama about an imagined meeting between Joseph Stalin and
JIM IORIO AND REBECCA LINGAFELTER
COLLAPSE (THIRD RAIL) It’s a setup for farce: In the wake of America’s financial and emotional collapse of 2007, Hannah (Rebecca Lingafelter), a tightly wound lawyer, desperately tries to stay in control despite a series of increasingly absurd challenges—her husband is watering the houseplants with beer, her sister has started casually running drugs, she’s shot full of fertility hormones and her only confidant is a stranger she meets outside a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting on which she was inadvertently eavesdropping. Given Third Rail’s predilection for doorslamming, we expect the story to escalate, growing louder and sillier until it implodes in a cloud of improbable coincidences. But doors are not slammed. Playwright Allison Moore seems less interested in dramatic silliness than in the more mundane absurdity of living: In the end, we control nothing; entropy will always win. And so everything in the play collapses, from Minneapolis’ Mississippi bridge, fallen pieces of which compose Larry Larsen’s rubbly scenic design, to the story itself. Collapse is a drama of disappointed expectations, in which seemingly important coincidences turn out to be meaningless, and the anticipated madcap climax is dealt with quietly, offstage. Things fall apart—just deal with it. Moore’s ingenious refusal to play by the assumed rules lends emotional weight to what might have otherwise been a trite tearjerker and gives its performers permission to avoid the usual clichés of disaster dramas. Jim Iorio neither mopes about the stage nor throws dishes as Hannah’s traumatized husband. Instead he moves constantly and anxiously, unable to rid himself of the shame and confusion of his own inability to cross a bridge or step in an elevator after falling into the Mississippi. He tries to laugh it off, but we can see the pain through his forced smile. Lingafelter plays Hannah as a frayed bundle of nerves, keeping her grip on civility with a tight hair clip. Watching her composure unravel is crushing, at least when you can see it—director Slayden Scott Yarbrough’s in-the-round staging makes for an intimate but sometimes frustrating view from Row A. Better to take a seat in the balcony—like any major collapse, this one may be best experienced from a safe distance. BEN WATERHOUSE.
Things fall apart, but not in the way you’d guess.
SEE IT: Winningstad Theatre, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 800-982-2787, thirdrailrep.org. 7:30 pm Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays. Through Jan. 29. $29.50-$38.50, $14.50 students. Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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JAN. 18-24
One Day
Unexpected Company presents a new musical about a day in the life of a modern high school. Village Free School, 8660 SE Foster Road, villagefreeschool.org. 7 pm Friday-Saturday, Jan. 20-21; 7 pm Saturday, Jan. 28; 2 pm Sunday, Jan. 29. $10.
Playback Theater
Audience members tell stories, which are then brought to life on the spot by Playback’s team of improvisers. The Headwaters, 55 NE Farragut St., No. 9, playbacktheaterpdx.com. 7 pm Sunday, Jan. 22. $15-$17.
Pulp Diction III
The reading series of new, pulpinspired plays returns for this year’s Fertile Ground festival with a sampler of seven shorts and two new full-lengths: Fengar Gael’s Gift of a Thousand Tongues, about highly advanced linguistics and genetics; and Matt Haynes’ The Night I Died, about some murders. Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, thepulpstage.weebly.com. “Pulp Sampler” 10:30 pm Saturdays, Jan. 21 and 28; “Gift of a Thousand Tongues” 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 22; “Red Hands” 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 29. $10.
Shackleton’s Antarctic Nightmare
Lawrence Howard revives his solo performance about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition to the southern extremes. Hipbone Studio, 1847 E Burnside St., portlandstorytheater.com. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays through Jan. 28. $15-$20.
Shakespeare Party: Measure for Measure
It’s the ultimate in audience participation: Attendees will be assigned a part at the door, and everyone will join in a boozy performance of Shakespeare’s odd comedy of puritanism and prostitution. The Waypost, 3120 N Williams Ave., surprisepartytheatre.tumblr.com. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 18. $5 suggested donation.
They
Walking Shadow Productions presents the apparent world premiere of a 1920 play by the obscure Polish painter, playwright and novelist Witkacy (born Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz), about an aesthete whose amorous evening with his mistress is disrupted by the discovery that a secret, art-hating society has moved in next door. The Back Door Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 236-8734. 8 pm ThursdaysSaturdays through Feb. 18. $15.
COMEDY Antiques Improv Show
The Brody crew improvises histories for whatever aging white elephants you bring in. May I suggest an antique vibrator? Brody Theater, 16 NW Broadway, 224-2227. 7:30 pm Saturdays through Jan. 21. $8-$10. All ages.
ComedySportz
Fast-paced, competitive, familyfriendly improv. ComedySportz, 1963 NW Kearney St., 236-8888. 8 pm Fridays-Saturdays. $12.
ers include Gary Noland (a premiere), Greg Steinke, Dan Senn, Dan Brugh and Jan Mittelstaedt. Sherman Clay/ Moe’s Pianos, 131 NW 13th Ave., 2353714. 3 and 7 pm Saturday, Jan. 21. $5-$20.
Jeff Ross
Cyrille Aimee and Diego Figueiredo
Comedy Central’s “Roast Master General” comes to town, presumably to say mean things about famous people. Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 234-9694. 8 pm Wednesday, Jan. 18. $25-$30. 21+.
David Saffert’s Birthday Bashtravaganza 2!
Musical comedian David Saffert celebrates his birthday with some song and dance, provided by OBT dancers Lucas Threefoot, Javier Ubell and Brett Bauer. Curious Comedy, 5225 NE Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., 1-800494-8497. 8 pm Friday-Saturday, Jan. 20-21. $10-$12.
The Unscriptables
Improv-comedy troupe The Unscriptables celebrates the opening of its new, permanent home with Secrets and Lies, an improvised drama of cruelty in the manner of Albee. Funhouse Lounge, 2432 SE 11th Ave., theunscriptables.com. Secrets and Lies 8 pm Fridays Jan. 20 and 27. “Pay what you want.”. 21+.
The Weekly Recurring Comedy Night
A comedy showcase featuring Ian Karmel, Anthony Lopez, Rick Taylor, Stephen Wilbur, Molly Fite and Joe Wrabek, hosted by Whitney Streed. Tonic Lounge, 3100 NE Sandy Blvd., 238-0543. 9:30 pm Wednesdays. “Pay what you want,” $3-$5 suggested. 21+.
CLASSICAL Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas
One of jazz’s most promising young singers, the 26-year-old Aimee has already recorded four CDs and performed at major world festivals. The French chanteuse’s globetrotting childhood exposed her to various strains of world music, especially French Gypsy sounds. She and Brazilian guitarist Figueiredo met when they won their respective categories in a major world jazz competition, and together they find a bubbling, lilting groove in songs deeply influenced by jazz, Brazilian beats and classical music. In this PDX Jazz concert, they’ll play music from Django to Jobim. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527. 8 pm Thursday, Jan. 19. $15.
(I AM STILL) THE DUCHESS OF MALFI (ARTISTS REP)
David Rogers and Hideki Yamaya
Murder at the disco-church.
Theatergoers know all about the King’s Men (no, not the Portland “Louie Louie” guys, but Shakespeare’s acting company), but the eponymous monarch’s predecessor had her own company of chamber musicians called, you guessed it, the Queen’s Music. And since Elizabeth I played the lute herself, she brought the most accomplished improviser-lutenists in England to serve as her own private iPods. The Eugene and Portland-based lutenists, both early-music specialists, perform solos and duets from that repertoire, which placed a premium on improvisation. Community Music Center, 3350 SE Francis St., 213-3144. 7:30 pm, Saturday, Jan. 21. $9-$12.
Oregon Symphony, Portland Symphonic Choir
Saxophonist Kates (Thicket, Naked Future and others) and inventive electronics gearhead Brian Mumford (Dragging an Ox Through Water, Jackie-O-Motherfucker) continue the provocative avant-garde Outset Series in a benefit for the valuable Creative Music Guild. Revival Drum Shop, 1465 NE Prescott St., 719-6533. 8 pm Wednesday, Jan. 18. $5.
Joseph Haydn’s magnificent 1798 oratorio The Creation (based on biblical creation myths and John Milton’s Paradise Lost) is one of the 18th century’s greatest choral orchestral works, fully the equal of his superlative symphonies of the period, though performed less often because of the massive forces required. With the 80-voice PSC and solo singers Christine Brandes, Benjamin Butterfield and Ben Wager contributing to the splendor, it’s a colorful, picturesque musical equivalent of Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling. Don’t be late: the opening sequence contains a musical representation of what we now call the Big Bang. Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 SW Broadway, 228-1353. 7:30 pm Saturday-Sunday, Jan. 21-22. $21-$92.
Cascadia Composers
Pius Cheung, Oregon Brass Quintet
The great Scots fiddler and accomplished young cellist have developed a warm and witty musical partnership over the years, and their concerts of traditional Celtic tunes never fail to delight. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 764-4131. 7:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 22. $22.
Ben Kates and Jewelry Rash
The industrious organization of Northwest new-music creators offers two concerts (with slightly different programs) featuring music for flute, bassoon, cello, gong, piano, voice and in the world premiere of eminent Portland composer Tomas Svoboda’s Two Canons for Fourteen Pianos, a passel of pianofortes. Other compos-
REVIEW OWEN CAREY
PERFORMANCE
The University of Oregon faculty members (including marimba master Cheung) perform music by J.S. Bach, the great Brazilian composer Caetano Veloso, and contemporary American trumpeter/composer David Sampson. White Stag Building—UO Portland campus, 70 NW Couch St., 541-3463134. 7:30 pm Friday, Jan. 20. Free.
CAMILLE CETTINA AND TODD VAN VORIS
Joseph Fisher’s ebulliently sordid (I Am Still) the Duchess of Malfi is less an updating of John Webster’s original Jacobean revenge drama than it is a romp in its macabre sandbox. The plot and characters have been jumbled and streamlined into a violently dissonant two-act that winkingly borrows tropes from camp and noir. Thus, the title amounts to an interesting bit of sport on the play’s identity; it, like the titular duchess, slyly insists on remaining itself. The setup remains similar: The widowed duchess of Malfi (Sara Catherine Wheatley) is forbidden ever to remarry by her two brothers, the insane Ferdinand (Jake Street) and the sociopathic cardinal (Todd van Voris, in a beautifully deadpan performance), but nonetheless secretly marries her poised steward, Antonio (Vin Shambry). Retribution ensues. In Fisher’s take, Bosola (Chris Murray), the instrument of that retribution, is reimagined as a wisecracking, immoral war vet with posturing straight out of The Wild One; the duchess vamps like a celebutante; and once-stolid confidante Delio (Nicholas Hongola) is recast as a comic, dandified Perez Hilton figure in cahoots with the audience. In director Jon Kretzu and set designer Daniel Meeker’s staging, the duchy of Amalfi is a steampunk assemblage of Gothic past and present, where a church and a discotheque amount to essentially the same thing—red, black, white and flickering light. The play’s second act tilts more serious—the punch line comes first and the fall second, in the old Italian style—and here only some of the characters survive, literally and figuratively. In keeping with a spelledout moral about contemporary parasitic celeb worship, the duchess much too suddenly becomes a noble (and willing) victim of the audience as much as the cardinal, while the overplayed Bosola’s turn in her favor remains unfortunately obscure and unlikely, despite quite a bit of primal-scene hand-wringing. But the play retains its interest throughout, in no small part because of the actors’ knowing, agile performances and the director’s similar agility from scene to scene. Kept mostly at distance from the broadly sketched characters, one finds it quite easy to sit back and enjoy the dishy spectacle just like we’re (not) supposed to. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. SEE IT: Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278, artistsrep.org. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays. Closes Feb. 12. $25-$50.
HEAR “FRENCH IMPRESSIONS” — NEW FROM VIOLINIST JOSHUA BELL! “French Impressions” is Joshua Bell's first recital program for Sony Classical and features the Grammy Award winning violinist collaborating with his longtime friend and recital partner pianist Jeremy Denk in passionately nuanced interpretations of sonatas by Franck, Ravel and Saint-Saens. A small quantity of autographed copies will be available, but are limited to supplies on hand. Also featured on sale is Joshua's entire Sony Classical discography of 15 CD titles.
Sale $11.99 CD
French Impressions
t ON SALE THROUGH FEBRUARY 8TH t 42
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
Joshua Bell-Violin Jeremy Denk-Piano
JAN. 18-24 Portland poetry and fiction fans, this is your show. Every year, the Northwest’s great new music ensemble explores fascinating combinations of words and music. This time, the big news is the world premiere of Paradises Lost, a new chamber opera by Illinois composer Stephen Taylor (who’s worked with Pink Martini, Storm Large and others), with libretto by Marcia Johnson. Based on the 2001 novella by Ursula K. LeGuin (who’ll be there for a post-concert Q&A), it takes the classic speculative fiction tale of people on a “generation ship” traveling for centuries to another solar system to a higher level. Portland’s best-known young poets and precogs, Matthew and Michael Dickman, will also perform, accompanied by 3A violinist Ron Blessinger and Donovan Breakwater and singer/guitarist Nalin Silva, who also composed the original score. These Hearing Voices shows are more than just concerts—they’re fascinating confluences of some of the most original Oregon artistry. Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., thirdangle.org. 7:30 pm Friday, Jan. 20. $10-$35.
co-producer Heidi Von Haught will be a special guest at this show, which also features readings by local burlesque performers Baby Le’Strange, Kit Katastrophic, Delilah Sinn, Rayleen Courtney and Sophie Maltease; Angelique DeVil serves as mistress of ceremonies. Literary selections run the gamut, from poetry to mystery novels to instructional manuals, and you can expect full nudity with your bedtime story. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. 9 pm Saturday, Jan. 21. $10-$25. 21+.
Rosehip Revue Two-Year Anniversary Show
Rosehip Revue celebrates two years of bump and grind with an anniversary show featuring Rose City Shimmy dancer Charlotte Treuse; Bridgetown Bombshells member Kit Katastrophic; Orchestre L’Pow’s Big Time Burlesquer Madison Moone;
co-producer of the new Portland chapter of Naked Girls Reading, Sophie Maltease, boyish trio Burlesquire and others. EmceeIam hosts; door prizes will be available. Star Theater, 13 NW 6th Ave. 9 pm Friday, Jan. 20. $13-$15. 21+.
Srimati Aparna Ramaswamy
Learn more about the classical Indian dance form bharatha natyam at this lecture and master class. Aparna Ramaswamy is a psychotherapist moonlighting as a bharatha natyam dancer and teacher, performs traditional dances, accompanied by an introduction of each dance’s place in the genre’s repertoire, as well as its representation of ashtanga yoga. Intel, Jones Farm Campus, 2111 NE 25th Ave., Hillsboro, 800-992-8499. 3-5 pm Saturday, Jan. 18. $10-$15. All ages.
REVIEW PAT R I C K W E I S H A M P E L
Third Angle
PERFORMANCE
ViVoce
Poet and storyteller Bob Sterry joins the a cappella women’s choral ensemble for a concert of folk songs from Latvia, Slovenia and England and the contemporary Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara’s dazzling Lorca Suite. St. Michael and All Angels Church, 1704 NE 43rd Ave., 274-4654. 7:30 pm Saturday, 4:30 pm Sunday, Jan. 21-22. $12-$15.
What do you get when you combine Jungian theory with contemporary dance? Something like To Remember is to Jump Around There, in which Danielle Ross Dance examines collective memory, individual history and the kind of social choreography we perform in our daily lives. Ross, who dances with Linda Austin and others when she’s not staging her own work, uses the piece to address the question of how we preserve what is dear to us. The Headwaters, 55 NE Farragut St., No. 9, brownpapertickets.com/event/217617. 8 pm Thursday-Friday, Jan. 19-20, 2 and 8 pm Saturday, Jan. 21. $15.
Groovin’ Greenhouse
Groovin’ Greenhouse, the dance component of annual performance spree the Fertile Ground Festival, returns with series of 90-minute triple-headers featuring new contemporary, tap, aerial, flamenco and classical dance works by local artists. Polaris Dance Theatre, which spearheads the Greenhouse, will premiere a work-in-progress called Dis-Cooperire, which explores the human condition through the lens of romantic love. The Greenhouse schedule is as follows: Beat BangerZ, PDX Dance Collective, Portland Festival Ballet (5:30-7 pm Saturday, Jan. 21); NW Fusion, Dance Coalition of Oregon, Polaris (8-9:30 pm Friday, Jan. 27); Laura Onizuka with members of Portland Flamenco Events, Agnieszka Laska Dancers, A-WOL Dance Collective (5:30-7 pm Saturday, Jan. 28); Cerrin Lathrop and Carlyn Hudson with members of SubRosa Dance Collective and Polaris (8-9:30 Saturday, Jan. 28) and Beat BangerZ, Jennifer Camp with members of Pacific Dance Ensemble and Polaris (4:30-6 pm Sunday, Jan. 29). Polaris Contemporary Dance Center, 1501 SW Taylor St., 380-5472. $10-$15 per showcase. All ages.
Naked Girls Reading
Reading is sexy, or so the thinking goes at Naked Girls Reading, which is exactly what it sounds like. This very Portlandish concept actually began in Chicago three years ago and has radiated outward to various metropolitan areas, including Seattle. In fact, NGR Seattle
SCOOTER PORN and MEET & GREET @ 7PM
“WORLD'S FASTEST INDIAN” MOVIE NIGHT @ 8PM 21+, FREE! IN THE SIDESHOW LOUNGE Thurs. January 19
DANCE Danielle Ross Dance
Weds. January 18
KATE EASTWOOD NORRIS AND BRIAN PATRICK MONAHAN
THE NORTH PLAN (PORTLAND CENTER STAGE) It’s a terrifying time: The president of the United States has been granted legal authority to hold anyone deemed a threat to the nation indefinitely, without trial, and even to order the assassination of U.S. citizens. In Congress, some legislators have seriously discussed the possibility of turning off the Internet in the name of national security. Reports surface daily of innocents kidnapped by U.S. agents and tortured in secret military prisons. And that’s just this morning’s RSS feed. In The North Plan, playwright Jason Wells takes the unchecked growth of America’s security-surveillance-detention complex to its worst possible conclusion, as the U.S. government is torn asunder by a military coup and the flag-waving goons behind it begin rounding up anyone who might be a threat to the regime. The only hope for the future is a single State Department employee (Brian Patrick Monahan), who’s ready to go public with the enemies list. But he’s stuck in a small-town jail, and his only hope is the foulmouthed redneck waitress (Kate Eastwood Norris) he begs to sneak the list out from under the noses of a pair of Homeland Security thugs and expose the plan. The North Plan is light entertainment at heart, leaning on creaky stereotypes and well-timed vulgarity for laughs and textbook thriller tropes for tension. All that elevates it above a Steven Soderbergh-directed Greater Tuna, besides Norris’ endless bouncy energy and Tim True’s spot-on performance as a small-town cop, is its awful plausibility. Like The Manchurian Candidate or Three Days of the Condor, Wells’ drama is, right up to its abrupt and ambiguous conclusion, an escapist fantasy with no escape. You should leave the theater worried. But you won’t get any hint of that from Portland Center Stage, which has included in the show’s program a frivolous essay on famous conspiracy theories that compares the play’s authoritarian machinations to Roswell and the faked moon landing. It’s as though Stanley Kubrick had kicked off Dr. Strangelove with a friendly ICBM puppet reminding us that nuclear annihilation isn’t really likely. Not only is the frivolous tone unfair to the playwright, it’s a dereliction of political responsibility. BEN WATERHOUSE. A comedy of extraordinary rendition.
SEE IT: The Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700, pcs. org. 7:30 pm Wednesdays-Saturdays, 2 and 7:30 pm Sundays and Saturday, Jan. 21. Closes Feb. 5. $20-$64.
2012PDX ART SPARK EVENT FAIR 5PM, 21+, FREE! Fri. January 20
INTERNATIONAL JAMAICAN REGGAE LEGEND
ANTHONY B 8PM DOORS
Sat. January 21
HARD FUNK AND SOUL with:
PIMPS OF JOYTIME MEDIUM TROY 8PM
Sun. January 22
THE SINDICATE METATHERIC
8PM, 21+ IN THE CONCERT HALL
KARAOKE ON THE BIG SCREEN! with SEAN BAILEY
9:30PM, 21+ FREE! IN THE SIDESHOW LOUNGE Tues. January 24
OLD SKOOL DJ NIGHT SPINNING ALL VINYL ELECTRO AND HIP HOP 9PM, 21+ FREE! IN THE SIDESHOW LOUNGE tickets and info
www.thetabor.com 503-360-1450
facebook.com/mttabortheater Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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VISUAL ARTS
JAN. 18-24
= 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.
WHITE BIRD
Co-Artistic Directors Angelle Hebert and Phillip Kraft PRISON BY PETER HALLEY AT DISJECTA
MAKE/BELIEVE
ASIA 2011
Inveterate globe-trotter Larry Cwik has long brought his colorful travelogues to viewers in Portland and across the country. Artgoers with long memories will remember his 2004 exhibition at Gallery 500, showcasing elegant idylls from Morocco. Cwik has also taken us along on his treks through Mexico and Antarctica. Now, in his first major Portland show since 2008, he shows us sights from his recent journey across Asia. As always, the photographer imbues his imagery with vibrant color and a sense of humanity that distinguishes his work from that of other travel photographers. Through Feb. 25. Milepost 5, 900 NE 81st Ave., 729-3223.
“Emotionally gripping, provocative work.” -Portland Mercury
Photo by Patrick Weishampel
Memory
event
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Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, 8pm
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In past exhibitions, Ellen George and Jerry Mayer have used unconventional materials in their installations in the boxily intimate Nine Gallery. Now they are at it again with Memory, a materially simple but conceptually complex work consisting of a single sheet of paper spanning an entire wall. Working on site, George and Mayer will crumple, rumple, crease and crunch the paper, deciding where and when to create the surface effects. Once a crease is made, it can’t be unmade. Its record is there, out in the open, irreversible, subject to the viewer’s judgment. Like these collaborators’ previous exhibitions, Memory invites allusions to the irretractibility of the decisions we make in everyday life. Through Jan. 29. Nine Gallery, 122 NW 8th Ave., 227-7114.
Peter Halley: Prison
This is a big deal—maybe the biggest deal to hit the Portland art scene in a decade. New Yorkbased painter and printmaker Peter Halley, an international sensation since his breakout moment in the 1987 Whitney Biennial, is coming to Portland to create an enormous installation at Disjecta. Halley pioneered the style known as “Neo-Geo” (short for Neogeometric conceptualism), in which squares and rectangles stand in for cells and prisons, critiquing both the grandiloquence of modernist attitudes toward geometry and the insidiousness of present-day technology. The installation, Prison,
is the last installment of Jenene Nagy’s remarkable curator-in-residence stint at Disjecta. The piece will wrap itself around the cathedral-like gallery space, with DayGlo paint and colored lights complementing printed “wallpaper” featuring Halley’s iconic prisons. The show promises to be an immersive experience, equal parts sensory overload and thematic complexity. Halley will lecture at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (1241 NW Johnson St.) at 7 pm Friday, Jan. 20. The Disjecta show opens the following evening (6-9 pm Saturday, Jan. 21) and runs through Feb. 25. The lecture and show are free and open to the public. Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave., 286-9449.
Recent Contemporary Print Acquisitions
An eerie sun hovers over an exploding shape, enveloped in an atmosphere of sooty acid rain: This is the iconic Burst series of the late Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb. The artist used simplified imagery to convey imagery that concretized his generation’s fears of atomic cataclysm. Gottlieb’s print, Expanding, is part of a selection of modern and contemporary prints culled from international collections by Robert Kochs, one of the Northwest’s most well-versed experts on prints. The work is at once cautionary, horrifying and haunting. Through Jan. 28. Augen Gallery DeSoto, 716 NW Davis St., 546-5056.
The Horse
After Froelick’s and Butters’ equine-themed exhibitions this past summer, it’s time for a moratorium on horses on gallery walls. A big whinny of disapproval, then, for Blackfish’s The Horse, a sixmonths-behind-the-curve celebration of a noble animal which has, through no fault of its own, become a hackneyed artistic muse. Curator Steve Tilden adds his own take to this group show featuring 13 additional artists. Tilden contributes cringe-worthy sculptures of unicorns, Trojan horses and other variations on the theme. Through Jan. 31. Blackfish Gallery, 420 NW 9th Ave., 234-2634.
For more Visual Arts listings, visit
BOOKS
JAN. 18-24
= WW Pick. Highly recommended. By MARIANNA HANE WILES. 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, JAN. 18
THURSDAY, JAN. 19
William Stafford Birthday Reading at Miracle Theatre
Comma Series
Portland’s Latino writers’ group, Los Porteños, sponsors a birthday reading in celebration of William Stafford. Readers and hosts include Cindy Williams Gutiérrez, Ana Consuelo, Mary Drew, Catherine Evleshin, Joann Farías, Joaquín López, Octaviano Merecías-Cuevas, Ivonne Saed, Olga Sanchez and Don Colburn. Guests are invited to bring their favorite Stafford poem to share. Miracle Theatre, 525 SE Stark St., 236-7253. 7 pm Wednesday, Jan. 18. Free.
Coaster Poetry Reading
If you’re in the ’Couv or curious to hear what happens when poetry is written on beer coasters, stop by Niche Wine Bar to hear the 10 winners of Niche’s coaster poetry contest read their work aloud. Each of the winning poems will be printed on a limited-edition set of coasters to be used at the wine bar; sets of all 10 will be available for purchase at the reading. Niche Wine and Art Bar, 1013 Main St., Vancouver. 7 pm, Jan. 18. Free. 21+.
Mountain Writers Series
On the third Wednesday of each month, Portland literary series Mountain Writers brings together two Pacific NW writers to read at the Press Club. This month’s picks are local poets David Biespiel and Wendy Willis. Press Club, 2621 SE Clinton St., 233-5656. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Jan. 18. $5 suggested donation. 21+.
For the first reading of the 2012 season, Comma features two Oregon poets, Casey Bush and Henry Hughes. Bush is the senior editor of Portland’s environmental-arts quarterly, The Bear Deluxe. Hughes is an Oregon Book Award winner for his 2004 collection, Men Holding Eggs. Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726. 7 pm Thursday, Jan. 19. Free.
SATURDAY, JAN. 21 Where the Wild Things Are
There will be live wild things—or, at least one eponymous Wild Thing from Maurice Sendak’s classic— hanging out in the children’s section of Barnes & Noble today. Bring kids to meet the Wild Thing and participate in other wild activities. Barnes & Noble Clackamas Town Center, 12000 SE 82nd Ave., 786-3463. 11 am Saturday, Jan. 21. Free.
Writers Talking: Richard Meltzer
Richard Meltzer was one of the first rock-music critics whose writing appeared in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and other publications. In his free time, he wrote lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult. Today he’s appearing as part of Multnomah County Library’s Writers Talk series. I’ll bet he has some mind-bending stories to share. Central Library, 801 SW 10th Ave., 988-5123. 1-2:30 pm Saturday, Jan. 21. Free.
MONDAY, JAN. 23 Back Fence PDX
Back Fence PDX, the live storytelling event, is back for 2012 with a fabulous first show on the theme “I didn’t think this through.” Featured storytellers include the owner of Whiffies Fried Pies and Laurie Notaro, professed Bigfoot enthusiast. Audience members will also be drawn at random to add their own true tales. As if this weren’t entertaining enough, the deal is sweetened with free cupcakes from Saint Cupcake at intermission and two ASL interpreters. Reserved tickets were sold out at the time of writing, but all unfilled seats will be released to the wait line at 7:45 pm. Gerding Theater, 128 NW 11th Ave., 445-3700. 8 pm Monday, Jan. 23. Free. 21+.
Drunk Poets Society
This poetry open mic takes place every Monday at the horror-themed Lovecraft bar. RUTH BROWN. The Lovecraft, 421 SE Grand Ave., 971270-7760. 8 pm. Free. 21+.
TUESDAY, JAN. 24 David Graeber
London anthropologist and Occupy Wall Street co-organizer David Graeber is in town to explain our historic and current relationships with debt and to promote his aptly titled book on the same topic, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Up-twinkles for his efforts. Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 NE Alberta St., 719-6055. 7 pm Tuesday, Jan. 24. $6-$7.50.
For more Words listings, visit
REVIEW
HONEY BADGER DON’T CARE The Honey Badger is a tenacious beast indeed. bines educational information with foulmouthed The meme, originated in a YouTube video that commentary in a way resembling a seventhchanneled the Crocodile Hunter through South grade science report you really wanted to turn in, Park’s Big Gay Al, has spread like germs in a but for the automatic suspension. For example, grade-school classroom. The high-water mark? in the physical description of an aye-aye, a small Probably a star college football player taking the lemurlike creature with startling yellow bugnickname Honey Badger, something sportscaster eyes, Randall asks, “I don’t get it—did Don Knotts Brent Musburger mentioned fuck a bat?” several times during the BCS The book is teeming with title game. the same colorful descripAnd, yes, Randall, the tions we’ve come to know flamboyant narrator, really from the quirky Internet landed a book deal from the personality—words like “nasvideo, something that makes tyass,” “largeass,” “bonyass.” the publishing industry look Most readers will find somesuspiciously like the birds and thing amusing, but much of jackals picking up the Honey the humor of the video is lost Badger’s scraps in the video. without Randall’s narration, But if someone can create and you quickly get the gist. something that gets people You’ll get more laughs for of all kinds (the WW office your money by sticking with included) huddled around a the YouTube version. glowing screen, there’s probAt least Randall gets his ably some touch of genius. good intentions out in the Randall is riding a simple introduction: “Peace, love, Ew, this book is nasty. equation—crude humor + and the protection and care Randall don’t give a shit. weird animals = more than for animals, through educa30 million views—all the way tion and comedy: That is to the bank with Honey Badger Don’t Care: Ran- my mission,” he writes. He dots all of his i’s with dall’s Guide to Crazy, Nastyass Animals (Andrews small blue hearts, so we’ve gotta believe him. McMeel Publishing, 80 pages, $14.99). Yes, it’s EMILEE BOOHER. pretty much an extended written version of the video, covering 12 different animals, including GO: Randall will speak at Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm the pink fairy armadillo, the emperor tamarin Tuesday, Jan. 24. Free. and, of course, the honey badger. The book com-
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JAN. 18-24 REVIEW
= WW Pick. Highly recommended.
FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL
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.
NEW
40th Anniversary Movie Marathon
[ONE LONG NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] The NW Film Center raises funds with a 12-hour cinema bacchanalia. The offerings include Sunset Boulevard, The Last Waltz, The Last Picture Show, The Princess Bride, Darkman and something secret from grindhouse gatekeeper Dan Halsted. Bagdad Theater. Noon Saturday, Jan. 21. $40.
The Adventures of Tintin
82 There has been some debate around
the WW office whether American kids even recognize Belgian comics legend Hergé’s teen journalist protagonist, Tintin, when they see him. It’s probably a moot point. Spielberg’s CGI Tintin film, like Christopher Nolan’s Batman pictures or Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, will soon define Hergé’s cast of iconic characters for a generation. That turns out not to be such a bad thing. While Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin is a tad higher-octane than its comic-book progenitors, the director clearly has a soft spot for the books, which he honors in the spectacular opening credits and the film’s opening scene. In the film’s early scenes, even Tintin’s lovable dog, Snowy, seems to have gone Hollywood. But as we prepare ourselves for another action movie by the numbers, something funny happens. Something really funny. His name is Captain Haddock. Played by Andy Serkis, Haddock is the film’s true lead, and he is absolutely brilliant. As soon as he is introduced, we start to care. It may be classic Spielbergian spectacle more than Hergé understatement, but damn it feels good, whether you’re familiar with Tintin or not. PG. CASEY JARMAN. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional showtimes.
Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked! Dancing rodents on an island. WW did not brave the horror. G. 99 Indoor Twin, Clackamas, Eastport, Forest. Call theaters for additional locations.
The Artist
64 Repressed memories drive The Artist. It’s a silent-film homage to silent films—or, rather, the fond, slightly condescending recollection of silent films. Already the Oscar front-runner, the comedy from Michel Hazanavicius (who directed the two OSS 177 spoofs) is yet another take on A Star Is Born, with a slam-bang energetic Jean Dujardin trading places in the spotlight with flapper Bérénice Bejo at the cusp of talkies. The period is apt, since most of the movie’s charms are technical gimmicks: the interstitial cards, the tight aspect ratio on glamorous black-and-white marquees, and the sneaky intrusion of ambient noises into the soundtrack. Days after seeing The Artist, I find it hard to place any individual moments that resonated (aside from the doggie heroism), and I suspect that, title aside, the movie feels a complacent cynicism toward art. PG-13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
Beauty and the Beast 3D
Tie your napkin ’round your neck, cherie, and we’ll POKE YOU IN THE EYE. G. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional locations.
Carnage
76 Considering the standard result in
Roman Polanski movies of yuppies breeding in fancy New York apartments—birthing the spawn of Satan in Rosemary’s Baby, that sort of thing— it’s a wonder little Zachary Cowan has merely knocked out two of his classmate Ethan Longstreet’s teeth with a stick to begin Carnage. The bitter comedy, which observes the hostilities that escalate when the Cowan parents visit the Longstreet pad to make a formal apology, has likewise been already consigned to the status of minor Polanski. Yes, it is nothing more than an adroitly choreographed
46
one-act. Yes, Yasmina Reza’s play rubs the veneer of civilization off the petit bourgeois with too obvious a gusto. (I’ve never seen anybody react so badly as these characters to an afternoon shot of whiskey.) But an opportunity for a quartet of actors—Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz—to play self-regarding louts hasn’t been grabbed with such relish since Mike Nichols made Closer. Carnage’s impact may have been dulled by timing. Nobody, not even Polanski, conveys the particular hell of polite company like Louis C.K. has been doing every week on television. But sometimes you have to get off the couch, and as an evening out for misanthropes, Carnage sure beats getting stuck at somebody’s house. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre.
Contraband
37 A thriller about the exciting, men-
tally challenged world of international smuggling, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, which is Icelandic for “Tony Scott.” Kormákur starred in the European version, called ReykjavikRotterdam; in the New Orleans remake, he is replaced by Mark Wahlberg as the retired smuggler. We know his trade because people are often mentioning it in awkwardly unambiguous ways. (“You are such a good smuggler!” “That’s why I love smuggling!” And so on.) Wahlberg is always a credible lunkhead, and for 60 minutes Contraband hovers just above boring thanks to his pissed-off brah routine and the outlandish accents of co-stars Giovanni Ribisi (Cajun lizard) and J.K. Simmons (Foghorn Leghorn). But at a certain point—the point where Diego Luna shows up in a duct-tape mask for a Panamanian gun battle, actually— the film crosses into the hopelessly ridiculous. In continental thrillers, such rampant silliness is obscured slightly by existential wretchedness and subtitles; in our domestic cinema, it is immediately recognizable as contrivance. The only performance of interest comes from Ben Foster as a shakily recovering alcoholic who becomes more stoical the further he falls off the wagon. Foster, that perpetually intense blond, seems to spiritually accept losing and minor villainy—what with the sudden surge of Ryan Gosling, he might as well. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Easport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional locations.
A Dangerous Method
81 So...tell me about your father. The
new David Cronenberg film about the salad days of psychoanalysis, A Dangerous Method isn’t a horror movie until you consider what isn’t shown. There are terrible memories of childhood beatings, recounted by Keira Knightley as Carl Jung’s patientturned-protégée Sabina Spielrein, as the specter of European genocide looms over the talking cures. The movie’s first 30 minutes take place in nearly unbroken sunshine, in the setting of Swiss lake holidays, punctuated by screaming. (Some of Knightley’s fits push the film toward a Gothic melodrama that is embarrassing in its own way; the picture is better when it’s more repressed.) What makes Method the most engrossing of the season’s releases is how the characters are grappling with bestial parts of themselves through ornate words— and often justifying savage betrayals or king-of-the-jungle pride the same way. “All those provocative discussions helped crystallize a lot of my thinking,” Michael Fassbender’s Jung tells Viggo Mortensen’s Freud. And while the movie includes lots of sex and spanking, it’s chiefly about the thrills, arousals and perils of conversation. R. AARON MESH. Fox Tower.
The Descendants
72 George Clooney, who may be the closest thing we now have to a Cary Grant, seems of late to be reversing Grant’s career trajectory. While Grant
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
SON OF A GUMP: Thomas Horn and Tom Hanks.
AIRPLANE!
EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE IS A CLOYING ATROCITY. BY A LISTA IR R OCKOFF
243-2122
From Billy Elliot to The Hours to The Reader, director Stephen Daldry has turned repressing your sexuality into something the upper class can feel sexy about. The people in his movies suffer the pain of being trapped in the closet, but they look really good doing it, and then it turns out they just needed to watch ballet or read a novel. If you recognize Swan Lake or Mrs. Dalloway, Daldry suggests, then you have nothing in common with homophobes and Nazis, and that’s important because it makes you hot. For his new film, Daldry has adapted Jonathan Safran Foer’s book, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. This means throwing out the sex and glamorizing childhood sadness instead of adult sadness. In the back of cinema’s lucrative closet, Daldry has discovered a cradle. Thomas Horn plays Oskar Schell, a nerdy 9-year-old who recently lost his beloved father (Tom Hanks) in the Sept. 11 attacks. He finds a key and imagines it is part of one last scavenger hunt designed for him by his dad. Desperate to keep the good times going, he searches New York City for the matching lock. “My name is Oskar Schell,” he tells people. “Did you know my father, Thomas Schell?” A tearful, preoccupied woman (Viola Davis) tries to get rid of him, but he talks his way into her home. Oblivious that her husband is moving out, he admires a photo of an elephant crying, then he lectures her: “Only humans can cry tears. It was probably manipulated in Photoshop.” Oskar is supposed to be mildly autistic—that’s why he ignores the feelings of others and obsesses over scientific trivia. But when it comes to his own feelings, the autism conveniently vanishes. “Don’t be disappointed in me!” he whines. He doesn’t have the challenging, heroic un-self-consciousness of a really autistic character like Napoleon Dynamite. Oskar looks and moves like a normal boy—first-time actor Horn is naturally precocious onscreen—but he talks like Woody Allen, with a neurotic, atheist
superiority. People who condescend to children or religion may find this faux naïf rather adorable. A blue-state holy fool, he touches the lives of lonely grownups in the vague, cloying fashion of many stories about cute kids. So it’s not surprising that Oskar’s father is played by Forrest Gump, and that the screenplay is by Eric Roth, who wrote that movie about a red-state holy fool. Like the American history in Forrest Gump, in this movie, 9/11 is not a reality to be examined, but instead, a boy’s symbol of adult tragedy, what Oskar calls “the worst day.” The filmmakers revisit that day merely to evoke a childish dread of death. This follows Foer’s book, which mixed the sorrow of 9/11 with lots of baby thoughts about war and Shakespeare and Stephen Hawking, and even a one-second movie—a twin towers flipbook. It was an upper-class version of Kids Say the Darndest Things When Their Fathers Are Killed in a Terrorist Attack. It appealed to sheltered urban readers. Their impotence in the face of destruction was
IT’S NOT SURPRISING THAT OSKAR’S FATHER IS PLAYED BY FORREST GUMP. turned into something arty they could play with and feel proud of rather than responsible for. For Warner Bros.’ two-hour blockbuster version, director Daldry knows how to do proud artiness. He concentrates, as usual, on rosy skin, maudlin musical montage, and look-at-me camera effects. These include Oskar’s visions of his father’s death, which are like a morbid picture book that doesn’t teach you anything. You almost expect to see that dastardly airplane peeking impishly around a corner, or Rudy Giuliani. There’s a fivesecond montage with a beatific gay man, as if to signal that Daldry has lost interest in exploiting queer masochism. Now, apparently, he exploits intellectual masochism. It’s painful to watch. 15 SEE IT: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is rated PG-13. It opens Friday at Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport and Cornelius. Additional locations were not available due to the holiday. Call Regal Cinemas for showtimes.
JAN. 18-24 went from pratfalling acrobat to ironically self-aware sex symbol, Clooney has recently made room in his usual Teflon-suave scoundrel persona for roles that place him more as a bruised emotional clown. In Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, Clooney puts in a nuanced, wincing performance as the Dickensianly named Matt King, a workaholic real-estate lawyer and haole heir of Hawaiian royalty, who finds himself suddenly at sea when his wife of many years is knocked into a terminal coma by a highspeed motorboating accident. Not only does he not know how to relate to his two daughters—stock indiequirky 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller) and acid-tongued boarding-school teen Alex (Shailene Woodley)—but he is left to discover that his lonely, stay-at-home wife had fallen in love with another man behind his back. Clooney makes the most of his underwritten role—it is a comedic wonder to watch him lope awkwardly in flip-flops, or register his polite, pride-sucking pain over and over—but it is difficult nonetheless for the viewer to invest emotionally in the film, despite its easy charisma. R. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport.
The Devil Inside
Another exorcism movie not screened for critics. This one’s in Italy. R. Clackamas, Eastport. Call theaters for additional locations.
Drive
95 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 also exhilarating filmmaking, from soup to swollen nuts. It contains half a dozen white-knuckle action sequences—starting with a Ryan Gosling 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. R. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre, Bagdad, Kennedy School, Laurelhurst, St. Johns Pub. NEW
Eastern Condors
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] Dan Halsted presents a 1987 that he calls “a kung-fu Dirty Dozen.” Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Tuesday, Jan. 24.
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos NEW
75 This movie is apparently a pretty big deal in the anime world, and rightfully so—set in a steampunkish universe where early-20th-century Europe meets medieval alchemy, it’s a classic story of struggle and rebellion against an oppressive government regime, with a well-developed plot and plenty of ridiculous action scenes. But those not already familiar with the Fullmetal Alchemist world (it was a manga series, and this is the second film) are going to have some questions. Namely, why is one of the main characters a giant robot with a unicorn horn? If you can’t answer that, I recommend either a thorough study of the Wikipedia page before viewing, or simply tuning out the robots, wolf man, flying bat people and other bizarre, unexplained plot points and just absorbing the story well enough to get to the epic final battle scene, which features a city being torn apart by giant lava hands and the main protagonists shooting magic lightning at each other. RUTH BROWN. Living Room Theaters, Kiggins Theatre.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
58 David Fincher’s take on Stieg
Larsson’s froth of woman-killing and woman’s revenge is less repellent than the flat nose-rubbing of the Swedish version, maybe because Fincher mostly gets his jollies from digital showboating. The movie looks like somebody found the pornography stash of Steve Jobs; the
MOVIES
FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: THE SACRED STAR OF MILOS snow and the torture chamber both look like they were designed by Apple. The enterprise has a necrotic vibe that is distancing, and in some shots, the characters’ skin is nearly purple. Fincher’s best jokes are all sick ones: A killer carves his victims to Enya, the opening credits are a Bond montage caked in a spew of power cords and crude oil, and he gets us awfully attached to that cat. The only human element is Rooney Mara. As the hacker detective Lisbeth Salander, she benefits from lucky miscasting: Her big, emotive eyes belie the heroine’s traumatized unfeeling. R. AARON MESH. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius.
The Hedgehog
80 The morbid yet sentimental cult
classic Harold and Maude lives on in the tangled blond hair of an 11-yearold Parisian girl named Paloma. The Hedgehog, a French coming-ofage drama, opens with the clichéd (and videotaped) monologue of this young, wealthy and intelligent child who says she’d rather die than succumb to the adult conformity that surrounds her. It gets better. SHAE HEALEY. Living Room Theaters. NEW
The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch
A French action flick about corporate espionage. And a guy named Largo Winch. Living Room Theaters.
Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians
75 [HELD OVER] If you’re a smug atheist like me, you’ll come into Holy Rollers: The True Story of Card Counting Christians looking to shake your fist and roar “Hypocrisy!” at the screen as you watch this team of evangelicals (of the young, trendy, tattooed, prolific-use-of-the-word“awesome,” members-of-shittyrock-bands variety) winning millions of dollars at blackjack tables in Vegas while babbling about “glorifying God.” But you won’t, because this is a pretty good documentary, and so by the halfway mark, these kids will have probably converted you with their genuine niceness, strong moral convictions and infectious positivity—as evangelicals are wont to do. The main protagonists are two floppy-haired “cool pastor” types from Seattle who learn to count cards (they say it’s easier than it’s made out to be; of this I remain a skeptic) and turn it into a business, commanding a team of other young believers who disperse across the country’s casinos, using math and wacky disguises to beat the house and return a tidy profit to their bosses and investors. And then, because this is a pretty good documentary, the good times stop rolling. RUTH BROWN. Clinton Street Theater. 7 and 9 pm WednesdayThursday, Jan. 18-26.
Hugo
80 Martin Scorsese’s decision to
helm the 3-D adaptation of Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, seemed an odd and possibly
addled one at first blush. But look at Scorsese’s filmography sideways and this august director’s late-career digression into family-friendliness makes a strange sort of sense, for beneath the blood and unpardonable French of films like Goodfellas and Casino, one finds a freewheeling and wide-eyed reverence for the antic, the cartoonish, the downright silly. (Two words: Joe Pesci.) Set in a vivid version of 1930s Paris so edibly adorable it might as well have been born in a crocodile tear sliding down Amélie’s pristine cheek, Hugo drapes its bittersweet study of broken dreams over a plot of fairy-story simplicity. The titular pipsqueak (played by extraterrestrially cute Asa Butterfield) is an orphan living inside the rather capacious walls of a sprawling train station patrolled by a guttersnipe-hunting station guard (Sacha Baron Cohen) and enlivened by a Tati-esque flow of murmuring humanity. Scorsese pulls off a few wonderful tricks with Hugo. It is a film populated by uncanny visions— dreams, films, dummies, trompe l’oeil expanses—and resonant with wonder, dolor and regret. The message: Life, though brief, admits of magic. The messenger: a master magician still. PG. CHRIS STAMM. Clackamas, Forest.
The Iron Lady
35 Give The Iron Lady points for transparency: The film’s centerpiece is shots of Meryl Streep practicing her accent, the foundation of her biennial Oscar bid. She’s been Danish and Polish and Australian and whatever Julia Child was—she’s like a sailor with a different drawl in every port. This time out, she’s playing Margaret Thatcher, who in fact did train to lower her register in the 1979 prime minister campaign. So we get a montage of Streep bellowing like she’s rehearsing British Channel whale songs. It is a gesture toward the essential falseness of Thatcher (who had to practice to sound like a no-nonsense mum) and an inadvertent reminder of the vaunted hollowness of Streep. She does impressions. At least half the picture is dedicated to an elderly Thatcher wandering through her quarters in a housedress, like Kermit the Frog at his mansion in The Muppets, talking to her late husband Denis (Jim Broadbent). The Iron Lady’s failure of taste is even more incredible when you remember that Thatcher is alive. The only equivalent I can imagine is if somebody made a Ronald Reagan movie in 1994 called The Gipper’s Got Alzheimer’s. Why would the filmmakers possibly choose this approach? For a very simple reason: It draws attention to Streep’s acting chops—not only can she play Margaret Thatcher, she can play a senile Margaret Thatcher!— and away from a moral reckoning. This movie doesn’t grant Thatcher the dignity of being a real bitch. PG13. AARON MESH. Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport. Call theaters for additional locations.
Production on your movie begins Winter Term. nwfilm.org/school
CONT. on page 48 Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
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JAN. 18-24
F I R S T R U N F E AT U R E S
MOVIES
Photo caption tk THE MAN NOBODY KNEW
J. Edgar
66 Spread over four decades and
“Smart...balanced. Operates on many levels, all riveting.”
THE MAN NOBODY KNEW IN SEARCH OF MY FATHER CIA SPYMASTER WILLIAM COLBY A Film by Carl Colby with Seymour Hersh, Bob Kerrey, Donald Rumsfeld, James Schlesinger, Tim Weiner, Bob Woodward and more
Q & A with filmmaker CArl Colby FRI. & SAT. 4:00 & 7:00PM SHOWS
STARTS FRI 1/20 ONE WEEK ONLY
CINEMA 21
616 NW 21st Ave. • (503) 223-4515 www.cinema21.com DAILY: 4:00 & 7:00PM ADD’L SAT/SUN: 1:45PM
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publishes Jan 25 deadline to reserve ad space: Thursday, Jan 19 aT 4 pm 48
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
leached of any bright hues, Clint Eastwood’s biopic of intelligencehoarding FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) is complex and brave, if at times almost comically misguided. Though filled with lurid material—Hoover intimidating Robert F. Kennedy with a tape recording of his brother screwing, Hoover trying on his mother’s nightgowns and necklaces—it never lapses into exploitation. Such tastefulness is Eastwood’s hallmark as a filmmaker, and also his great weakness: It makes him almost as humorless as the man he’s chronicling. Eastwood’s big miscalculation is shooting nearly half the movie with Hoover and confidante Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) in liver-spotted old-age makeup, so that by the end it looks like crotchety Muppets Statler and Waldorf are heckling Martin Luther King Jr. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Joyful Noise
31 And lo, the Lord said, “Let ye not
be resigned to watch that wornout VHS copy of Sister Act during church lock-ins and charter-bus trips to the casino. Let thou enjoy the musical styling of the prophets Sly Stone and Usher, with their hymns reconfigured to substitute My name in the place of drugs and fornication in soaring gospel numbers. And we shall see miracles like breakdancing redneck gingers and the rise of the Queen of Latifah as she and St. Parton of Dollywood—the patron saint of Botox—unite to saveth a beloved choir from demise and win the national singing championship. You will know it is My time when the ghost of choir director Kris Kristofferson rises from his tragic death during the opening credits and waltzes in the moonlight with the good wife Parton. Interracial couples will holdeth hands and sayeth ‘gee whiz’ while kissing cheeks, and the multiracial world of Southern black gospel music will rise to the forefront of popularity. And it will be mediocre at best.” Amen. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional locations.
NEW The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby
58 [ONE WEEK ONLY, DIRECTOR
ATTENDING] It takes a cold-blooded piece of work to conclude a documentary with the flat declaration that your father never loved anyone, but then Carl Colby’s pops was himself one cold-blooded piece of work. William Colby was a Vietnam War architect and Nixon-appointed CIA director, and much of this movie is preoccupied with demonstrating that the old man, a kind of Yankee Doodle George Smiley, wasn’t quite as bad as his résumé implies. Judging from The Man Nobody Knew, he is also The Man Everybody Is Willing to Offer Justifications For; the film scores interviews
with both Donald Rumsfeld and Seymour Hersh. Maybe they were all impressed by Carl’s courage: It takes some spine to investigate why your dad’s name keeps being accompanied by the phrase “assassination program.” But the doc is either willfully evasive or naively charitable. It even gets repeated appearances from a priest who explains how a good Catholic might behave in South Vietnam—almost a sick joke, since the best Catholics in South Vietnam were state-sponsored murderers. Carl Colby is on his own conflicted mission, trying to exculpate William Colby globally and berate him personally. (You get the feeling Carl’s a lot more morally affronted by his parents’ divorce than the killing of a few Vietnamese.) He sees his father with a mixture of resentment and awe—which is, not coincidentally, how most Americans view their government. AARON MESH. Cinema 21. Friday-Thursday, Jan. 20-26. Director Carl Colby will attend screenings on Friday-Saturday, Jan. 20-21.
Mission: Impossible— Ghost Protocol
83 In only three magnificent films—
The Iron Giant and Pixar smashes The Incredibles and Ratatouille— director Brad Bird has honed an eye: one of uncanny imagination, one that envisions a chaotic urban battlefield and a small kitchen as scenes of similar peril. That’s essential to a film in which crawling through a ventilation shaft and dangling from the world’s tallest building are equally dangerous. Luckily, Bird’s eye for the real world more than matches his animated ingenuity. Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol finds Tom Cruise’s generic super-agent Ethan Hunt sprinting from set piece to set piece to stop a madman from blowing up the world. That’s it. No talky exposition. Just kinetic action (much of it shot in glorious IMAX), gadgetry of the Wile E. Coyote variety and the requisite goofy disguises. Ghost Protocol starts with a Russian prison break and immediately Cruise, comic relief Simon Pegg, vixen Paula Patton and heir apparent Jeremy Renner are framed for blowing up the Kremlin (a nice nod to the series’ Cold War origins) and forced to kick ass and clear their names. Bird fluidly guides the mayhem with the eye of an animator and the humor of a child unleashed on a new playground. With Ghost Protocol he accomplishes the unlikely by taking a stagnant franchise and molding the best action film of the year. PG-13. AP KRYZA. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional locations.
The Muppets
85 Every Muppet movie—hell, even
the ’70s television show—is about pining for a bygone era, whether it be that of the vaudevillian variety show that The Muppet Show romanticized so well, or the caper flick, or even Treasure Island. This reboot, coordinated by Jason Segel, asks: Can’t we just be happy with an
old-fashioned, MGM-style musical number (with puppets)? The tear stains on my jacket are proof I’m not too hard to please. Some of my favorite moments were the original songs by Flight of the Conchords’ Bret McKenzie. Conchords fans will notice parallels to his other stuff, but these compositions are a delight. (The only misstep is when Chris Cooper’s villain goes all rappin’ granny on us.) Amy Adams is upstaged by the new Muppet, Walter, who is 2 feet tall and her rival for Segel’s companionship. Walter’s a perfect addition to the gang, serving as an avatar for all us grown children who still love the plush. I have quibbles: In a movie that had an a cappella “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and chickens clucking Cee-Lo’s “Fuck You,” why were “The Rainbow Connection” and “Mahna Mahna” the only songs from the older movies included? But this film made me feel the same joy that The Muppet Movie stirs decades later. That’s pretty impressive. PG. AP KRYZA. 99 Indoor Twin. Call theaters for additional locations.
My Week With Marilyn
44 Michelle Williams steps off the Oregon Trail to play Marilyn Monroe, and gets about halfway there. She has the look of Marilyn—her features are like a portrait of Tinker Bell carved from a ripe peach—and nails the calculated-naif pout of the public persona, but she’s never quite convincing as Norma Jean Baker. Her efforts to seem wounded and confused are always a smidgen too knowing and telegraphed. The surrounding movie looks at Monroe from the least interesting possible angle, that of snooty Anglos. It is a typical Weinstein Company property in the wake of The King’s Speech: light, British and shapeless. R. AARON MESH. Call theaters for locations.
Pariah
73 It’s not a new story: Girl searches
for love, girl finds love, girl loses love, finds herself. But first-time writer/director Dee Rees’ new Sundance-approved film gives us a girl and a setting worth watching: Adepero Oduye as Alike, a 17-yearold black woman just beginning to navigate life as a lesbian—much to the discomfort of her spectacularly brittle mother (Kim Wayans) and Fort Greene, Brooklyn, neighbors. The gritty yet winsome film is a case study in avoidance. On the verge of “losing” her daughter, Alike’s mom refuses to let her hang out with her butch best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), and buys her pink sweaters to break her habit of donning ballcaps and menswear. Her cop dad mumbles “You know you’re Daddy’s girl, right?” and abruptly changes the subject. Bouncing from hip-hop-blaring strip clubs to Afropunk house parties, burgeoning writer Alike just wants to meet a girl and have her first kiss. Frustrated and on guard against revealing too much of herself, Oduye is genuine and affecting even when she’s silent: her brow furrowed in hurt or her mouth stretched in a rare, split-second smile so bright that could light up the whole city. Dees has a knack for understated words and authentic moments, even when it’s Alike fidgeting with the strap-on dildo she’s asked Laura to buy her to bolster her confidence. Sadly, the ugly reaction when Alike admits to being gay isn’t a surprise. But the bittersweet power of this little film is. R. KELLY CLARKE. Fox Tower. NEW
Portlandia Season 2
70 [TV ONSCREEN] Portlandia’s
new season features the Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen characters—some new ones, most recurring from the first run—in many settings. They drink cocktails at Central, go tubing on the Sandy River, and attempt a wedding at Cathedral Park. What they never do is work. With the exception of two newscasters covering an Allergy Pride Parade, the only visibly employed protagonists are
JAN. 18-24
NEW
Red Dawn featuring Hecklevision
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, MOCKERY] Apocalypse now: Portland Mercury writers project snarky comments at the bottom of John Milius’ commieinvasion movie. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Friday, Jan. 20. NEW
Red Tails
Take that, Mr. Hitler! Not screened for critics by WW press deadlines; look for a review on wweek.com. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional locations.
Saturday Morning Cartoons at Night NEW
[ONE NIGHT ONLY, REVIVAL] It hardly seems possible this has not happened in Portland previously, but it hasn’t. Here are Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, Thundarr the Barbarian and Schoolhouse Rock, all together on a big screen with beer. Hey, hey, hey. Hollywood Theatre. 7:30 pm Monday, Jan. 23. $5. Free cereal for early arrivals.
Shame
86 “I find you disgusting.” These are
the first substantive words spoken in director Steve McQueen’s sex-negative new film, aptly titled Shame. They are a misdirection, delivered after a crafty cut to a luxe office meeting, but they are spoken immediately after the film’s subject—Brandon Sullivan, played by a Bale-intense Michael Fassbender—has bought himself a high-end prostitute. And thus, the main focus and dichotomy in the movie: a constant swing between Sullivan’s clinically posh New York life and his lonely, seamy, uncontrolled sexual obsessions. It’s a very controlled, near tour-de-force by director McQueen. NC-17. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Living Room Theaters. NEW
Shaun of the Dead
79 [THREE NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL]
Shaun of the Dead has infected so many imitators in seven years that the mention of Edgar Wright’s genrebender almost summons a reflexive twinge of dislike. I’m actually pretty bored by the zombie comedy, in the same way I’m bored by sandwiches stuffed with French fries, even though I didn’t know either could exist until very recently. And yet: Who could tire of Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton as Shaun’s exasperating parents, who cling so tightly to decency in the face of a silly abyss? This is a new kind of movie, distinguished by old-fashioned values. R. AARON MESH. 5th Avenue Cinema. 7 and 9:30 pm FridaySaturday, Jan. 20-21. 3 pm Sunday, Jan. 22.
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 42 While watching Guy Ritchie’s new
entry in the Sherlock Holmes franchise, it was difficult not to think of Hairspray. Not the seminal camp John Waters feature, but the slapstick John Travolta version based on the subpar
Broadway musical that was, in turn, loosely adapted from the original. In a similar unholy game of telephone, the two characters in Ritchie’s Sherlock have nothing to do with Conan Doyle or Basil Rathbone but rather are rooted in Drs. Wilson and House (who himself lives in the Holmesian apartment 221B) from Fox’s House, M.D. So Holmes (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) are here polymathic Victorian fratboys, prone to pranking, with earnest do-gooder Watson terminally at the mercy of his sociopathic-with-a-heart-of-gold, gameobsessed friend. This is not a Holmes who first discovers a mystery and then sets about solving it with uncanny precision; Downey is a dimly wisecracking blunderbuss whose main talents seem to be intellectual bullying, all-around asskicking and the art of disguising himself as women or furniture. And so we travel from action-packed setpiece to action-packed setpiece along a distressingly loose causal chain, and with any luck we don’t care much why. But each scene carries essentially zero momentum or tension from the last and the plotlines come from outer space, leaving us essentially indifferent to who gets shot or who wins or anything else. And so despite all the steampunky whizzbangery and drolly narrated action, the movie’s duller than Christmas tofurky and just as indigestible. PG-13. MATTHEW KORFHAGE. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius. Call theaters for additional locations.
The Skin I Live In
86 Very particular body-image issues
are at the core of The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodovar’s violently outre new movie. It proves that the director’s penchant for physical modification has only grown more pointed—or rounded. It is perhaps the most twisted and unsettling film Almodovar has made (and this is a director whose Talk to Her featured a nurse tenderly raping his comatose patient), but it is not exactly a horror movie. Instead, it is a throwback to golden-age Hollywood’s mad-scientist movies, as if the dressup games of Vertigo had been conducted by James Whale around the time he made Bride of Frankenstein. R. AARON MESH. Living Room Theaters.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
23 British author John le Carré answered James Bond fantasy with his realistic sense of class politics and moral disillusionment in a faded empire. His 1974 novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, filled six hours when the BBC adapted it for television. In this version, a mere two hours are supposed to convey agent George Smiley’s search for a Soviet mole among his colleagues at MI6, or “the Circus.” Because the English actors look distinctive, you can almost follow the plot, beginning with Mark Strong as a fellow agent who gets ambushed in Budapest. Before we know anything about the guy, we’re expected to fear for his life because the film’s director, Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In), turns up the earthquake sound effects. Like many young boys, Alfredson seems enamored with the movies of David Fincher, in which pale, paranoid men discover horrible corpses, and all the politics and emotions of adult life have conveniently taken place off camera. This English spy version is especially disingenuous. Again, like a young boy, we’re supposed to be impressed by the men’s cool emotional repression, but also impressed with ourselves for leading happier lives than theirs. Their personal history together is summarized in flashback rather than being explored in drama and decors we can really feel. R. ALISTAIR ROCKOFF. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Fox Tower. Call theaters for additional locations.
NEW Treasures From the UCLA Film and Television Archive
[TWO NIGHTS ONLY, REVIVAL] The NW Film Center’s raid of UCLA vaults concludes with The Chalice of Sorrow (7 pm Thursday, Jan. 19), a 1916 adaptation of Tosca; and Zero Mostel in a TV adaptation of Waiting for Godot (8:30 pm Thursday and 7 pm Friday,
Jan. 19-20). NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium.
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 29 The Twilight saga is finally getting
to the good stuff. And by good stuff I mean the vampire batshit crazy stuff: rough girl-on-vamp sex, demon babies, blood health tonics and wolf mind links. And yet, with all this delightfully bizarre fodder, much of the fourth movie (otherwise known as “the one where Edward and Bella get married, finally do it and Bella gets impregnated with his vampire baby”) is about as fun as a pelvic exam. All three leads— scowl-faced Kristen Stewart, sad alabaster puppet Robert Pattinson and shirt-shredder Taylor Lautner—act as if they were expecting another press junket and wandered on to a movie set by mistake. And yet, it’s not all terrible. Or, to be clear, the last third of the film is so fabulously awkward and silly as to approach camp-classic status. Forced to endure an insatiable fetus draining her body from the inside out, Bella looks truly chilling. As her due date nears, her body is reduced to a skull attached to what looks like a wind chime made of gnawed chicken bones. It’s the only unsettling image the movie franchise has ever produced. Even better, the much anticipated birthing scene (a fan favorite during which, true to the book, Edward performs Bella’s emergency C-section with his teeth) is a masterpiece of the histrionic and the ridiculous that ends with both Team Edward and Team Jacob artfully covered with smears of blood and womb goo. It’s the kind of scene that makes you want to invent a drinking game and watch it a half-dozen times on repeat while you laugh uncontrollably and squirt whiskey out of your nose. PG-13. KELLY CLARKE. Call theaters for
There’s a marvelously unsteady yelling match between father and son midway through, where Damon’s kid asks his dad why he’s forcing this dream on him, and Damon cries out: “Because it’s a great dream! With cool animals!” That naked optimism is disarming. PG. AARON MESH. Clackamas, Eastport. Call theaters for additional locations. NEW
!Women Art Revolution
63 [ONE DAY ONLY] Quick, name
three female artists. No, Katy Perry doesn’t count. Give up? Most people do, and that’s the thrust behind Lynn Hershman Leeson’s !Women Art Revolution, a movie she says has been in the making for over 40 years. That’s how far back some of these interviews and performance clips date,
and how long Leeson’s peers—Rachel Rosenthal, Judith Baca and Sheila de Bretteville, to mention just a few to remember for your next trivia night—have flown under the radar of the male-dominated art world. The documentary helps push their names into the lexicon and to shine a light on their work, which has been kept out of museums for decades. But as a narrative of their struggle, it’s scattershot, and as a film—especially one with an original score by Carrie Brownstein—far more dry than its subjects deserve. MATTHEW SINGER. NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium. 4 pm Sunday, Jan. 22.
REVIEW CLAUDETTE BARIUS
Toni and Candace, the feminist bookstore owners who do everything in their power to avoid moving retail. In an era when the best TV comedies—The Office, Party Down, Parks and Recreation—have been centered on the workplace, Portlandia reaches back for the dream of the ’90s as represented by Seinfeld and Friends. It’s set in a lifestyle destination where people take their leisure gravely serious. Brownstein has insisted that Portlandia isn’t a satire; the first three episodes of a more carefully balanced Season 2 support her claim. It’s a horror show about happiness. The residents get too much of what they want, and obsess over the proper and moral forms of gratification. When the series is in top form, they hone privilege to an art: Brownstein specializes in the screaming tantrum, while Armisen identifies the many flavors of satisfied milquetoast. Portland should be smug that its flagship TV show is set in a paradise that requires finding trouble. AARON MESH. Hollywood Theatre. 10 pm Friday, Jan. 20. Mission Theater. 7 and 10 pm, with variety show “The Friday Night TV Party & Theater Club Neighborhood Association” in between.
MOVIES
showtimes. NEW
Underworld: Awakening 3D
Kate Beckinsale finds Lycans and POKES YOU IN THE EYE. Not screened for critics. PG-13. Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Tigard, Wilsonville. Call theaters for additional locations.
War Horse
48 Steven Spielberg has directed a twin bill of holiday films, but the ostensibly more mature entertainment, War Horse, has the exact same plot as a children’s film: 1945’s Son of Lassie. In both pictures, a British Isles pet— substitute plow horse for collie—is dropped behind German enemy lines, and has encounters with innocents who promptly die. The echoes may be accidental, and are partly the responsibility of War Horse’s book and Broadway lineage, but Spielberg has very consciously made a 1940s family picture. The Irish greenscapes are as gossamer and fake as the sets of Brigadoon. It is typical of Spielberg to make a World War I picture in which the central players emerge unharmed, like E.T. and Elliott on the Western Front. Even without the stage version’s famed puppets, War Horse has moments of wordless power—a cavalry changing into a Gatling gun, the mounts galloping on, riderless—but it is skill devoted to grating nonsense. PG-13. AARON MESH. Clackamas, Eastport. Call theaters for additional locations.
We Bought a Zoo
70 Everybody feels oh so very much
in We Bought a Zoo, but that’s to be expected from Cameron Crowe, whose heart has been perpetually on his sleeve since Say Anything. The movie is explicitly about risking embarrassment: the possibility of ridicule that comes from carrying a capuchin on your shoulder, playing Cat Stevens songs loudly, or...well, buying a zoo. It’s not quite the glop of Elizabethtown, but no humane sentiment goes unremarked (or unreiterated), and with Matt Damon playing a newly single parent trying to salve his kids’ bereavement, it’s essentially The Descendants for people who don’t get subtlety. I must be one of those people: Large sections of We Bought a Zoo worked me over. (Not the parts with the monkey.) Crowe is didactic, and thinks too highly of Sigur Rós’ Jónsi as a composer, but he’s also unafraid to work through relationships in dialogue.
GINA’S GOT A GUN: Gina Carano.
HAYWIRE Are actors necessary? Many of cinema’s powerhouse directors, from Hitchcock to Kubrick, preferred to think of their performers as nonessential furnishings, but only Steven Soderbergh has tried to eliminate them entirely. In the shadow cast by his promised but ever-receding retirement, Soderbergh can work with nearly any star he likes, but he prefers the company of amateurs and alternative professionals. There was porn starlet Sasha Grey as a $2,000-an-hour escort in The Girlfriend Experience, and here in espionage thriller Haywire is Gina Carano: an ultimate-fighting champion uncaged to destroy Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender and Antonio Banderas. It’s as if Soderbergh sent a bouncer to clear out Wolfgang Puck’s Oscar afterparty. The Girlfriend Experience, like most of Soderbergh’s recent work, was an interesting abstract experiment. Haywire is a sly triumph. Carano, who plays a black-ops mercenary and resembles a beefed-up Danica Patrick, struggles in early dialogue exchanges—but then Channing Tatum attacks her with a coffee mug and she’s freed to communicate with her thighs, which she uses to put GQ cover boys in lethal headlocks. Her native expressionlessness ups the ante on the macho inscrutability affected by would-be Bonds, and her onslaught against debonair foes (all of them at their most iconically suave) feels like a sabotage of male ego. Michael Angarano even plays the helpless ingénue whose carjacking and panicked demand to hear the backstory is a genre requirement. Other than the gender somersault, this is an unremarkable action script: double-cross and revenge, studded with fights. Its delights are all in the deployment of style. With its sequences divided into different color and location motifs—blue mesa, golden Dublin, pink Mexico—Haywire is Soderbergh making a remix of the spy flick. It’s a lo-fi, unplugged studio session: Even the central car chase is conducted at low speed across packed snow. The movie’s title must be tongue-incheek, since Haywire is a demonstration of control. Soderbergh is an independent director who makes passionate cases for the establishment (see Traffic and Contagion), and Haywire, with its government bureaucrats cleaning up a military contractor’s mess, is no exception. Individual personalities may go berserk, but a firm hand—and strong thighs—are in charge. R. AARON MESH.
The mixed-martial artist.
91 SEE IT: Haywire opens Friday at Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Clackamas, Eastport, Cornelius, Pioneer Place, Lloyd Mall, Tigard and Wilsonville.
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
49
MOVIES
JAN. 20-26
BREWVIEWS
Sun-Mon-Tue 08:30 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: CHIPWRECKED Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 06:35 HUGO Fri-Sat-Sun 03:30
Hollywood Theatre
4122 NE Sandy Blvd., 503281-4215 CARNAGE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 07:15, 09:15 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:45 HECKLEVISION: RED DAWN Fri 07:30 PORTLANDIA Fri 10:00 SATURDAY MORNINGS AT NIGHT Mon 07:30 EASTERN CONDORS Tue 07:30
NW Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium
THE LONG CAAN: The movie highlight reel has become one of the dependable enjoyments of the Internet—if you want to see The Big Lebowski or Scarface trimmed to only their F-bombs, you’re in your element—but it also provides opportunity to craft an entirely new object. As part of the pre-Portlandia show “The Friday Night TV Party & Theater Club Neighborhood Association,” my co-founders of Beer and Movie have cut a rawboned sliver of Michael Mann’s Thief. The montage, supervised by local video editor Darren Aboulafia, shows James Caan exploding in aggrieved rage. But at its climax it starts repeating images, becoming a ritual of loading and aiming a gun—as if Caan just can’t get enough of his own nihilism. Take another swig. BAM is back. AARON MESH. Showing at: Mission. 7:30 pm Friday, Jan. 20. Best paired with: Terminator Stout. Also showing: Serpico (Academy), Say Anything... (Laurelhurst).
Regal Lloyd Mall 8 Cinema
2320 Lloyd Center Mall, 800-326-3264 HAYWIRE Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 12:25, 03:15, 06:10, 09:30 UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 12:05, 03:10, 06:25, 09:15
Cornelius 9 Cinemas
200 N 26th Ave., 503-8448732 UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 02:30, 05:30, 07:30, 09:30 RED TAILS Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 02:15, 04:45, 07:15, 09:45 EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 01:40, 04:20, 07:00, 09:35 HAYWIRE Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 02:50, 05:50, 07:50, 09:50 CONTRABAND Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 02:35, 05:00, 07:20, 09:40 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 02:10, 05:10, 07:10, 09:00 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -GHOST PROTOCOL Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 01:35, 04:15, 07:00, 09:40 JOYFUL NOISE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 02:20, 04:40, 07:05, 09:25 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 01:35, 06:50, 09:25 BUSINESS MAN Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 04:10 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Fri-Sat-Sun 11:30
Bagdad Theater and Pub
3702 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-249-7474 MONEYBALL Fri-Sun 06:00 DRIVE Fri-Sun-Mon-Tue 08:25 HAPPY FEET TWO Sun-Mon-Tue 06:00
Cinema 21
wweekdotcom 50
Willamette Week JANUARY 18, 2012 wweek.com
616 NW 21st Ave., 503-2234515 THE MAN NOBODY KNEW: IN SEARCH OF MY FATHER, CIA SPYMASTER WILLIAM COLBY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-
Tue 04:00, 07:00 THE ROOM Fri-Sat 09:30
Clinton Street Theater
2522 SE Clinton St., 503238-8899 HOLY ROLLERS: THE TRUE STORY OF CARD COUNTING CHRISTIANS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:00, 09:00 THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW Sat 12:00
Laurelhurst Theatre
2735 E Burnside St., 503232-5511 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 06:45 THE SKIN I LIVE IN Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:00 SAY ANYTHING... Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:45 MELANCHOLIA FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:00 THE IDES OF MARCH Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 07:20 DRIVE Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 09:30 MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 09:15 MONEYBALL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 06:30 PUSS IN BOOTS Sat-Sun 01:45
Mission Theater and Pub
1624 NW Glisan St., 503249-7474 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Fri-Sun-Tue MY WEEK WITH MARILYN SatMon 05:30 MELANCHOLIA Sat-Mon 07:35 THE SITTER Sat-Mon 10:15
Kiggins Theatre
1011 Main St., 360-737-3161 THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING Fri-Sat 12:00 THE NEVERENDING STORY FriSat-Sun 03:45 FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST: THE SACRED STAR OF MILOS Fri-Sat-Sun 06:00
Century Eastport 16 4040 SE 82nd Ave., 800326-3264 ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS:
CHIPWRECKED Fri 12:40, 02:55, 05:15 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS Fri 01:30, 04:25, 07:20, 10:25 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL Fri 12:50, 03:55, 07:10, 10:20 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri 03:15, 10:00 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Fri 01:45 WE BOUGHT A ZOO Fri 07:30, 10:30 EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE Fri-Sat-Sun 01:00, 04:00, 07:05, 10:00 WAR HORSE Fri 12:00, 06:45 THE DESCENDANTS Fri 11:25, 02:20, 05:05, 07:50, 10:30 THE IRON LADY Fri 11:30, 02:15, 05:00, 07:45, 10:25 JOYFUL NOISE Fri 11:00, 01:50, 04:40, 07:25, 10:20 CONTRABAND Fri 11:20, 02:05, 04:50, 07:35, 10:10 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Fri 01:40 THE DEVIL INSIDE Fri 11:05, 05:40, 07:55, 10:05 UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING Fri-Sat-Sun 01:15 HAYWIRE Fri-Sat-Sun 11:30, 02:00, 04:30, 07:30, 10:00 RED TAILS Fri-SatSun 01:10, 04:15, 07:15, 10:15 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 3D Fri 11:10, 04:20, 07:10, 09:50 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D Fri 11:15, 04:10, 06:50, 09:20 UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING 3D Fri-SatSun 12:15, 02:30, 04:45, 07:00, 09:30
Kennedy School Theater
5736 NE 33rd Ave., 503249-7474 PUSS IN BOOTS Fri-SunMon 03:00 THE SITTER Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 02:30 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon 09:35 HAPPY FEET TWO Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon 05:30
Fifth Avenue Cinemas
510 SW Hall St., 503-7253551 SHAUN OF THE DEAD FriSat-Sun 03:00 NO FILMS SHOWING TODAY Mon-Tue
Forest Theatre
1911 Pacific Ave., 503-8448732 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-Sat-
1219 SW Park Ave., 503221-1156 WAITING FOR GODOT Fri 07:00 40TH ANNIVERSARY MOVIE MARATHON Sat 12:00 WOMEN ART REVOLUTION Sun 04:00
St. Johns Pub and Theater
8203 N Ivanhoe St., 503249-7474 HAPPY FEET TWO Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 06:00 DRIVE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 08:30
Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing
3200 SW Hocken Ave., 800326-3264 SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:00, 01:55, 04:50, 07:45, 10:35 TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 11:00, 01:50, 04:40, 07:35, 10:25 MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE -- GHOST PROTOCOL Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 11:00, 01:50, 04:40, 07:35, 10:30 THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 12:10, 03:35, 07:00, 10:15 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 11:40 EXTREMELY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:00, 01:50, 04:45, 07:40, 10:35 THE DESCENDANTS FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:20, 02:00, 04:40, 07:20, 10:00 THE IRON LADY Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 12:05, 02:45, 05:15, 07:45, 10:15 JOYFUL NOISE FriSat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:15, 02:00, 04:45, 07:40, 10:15 CONTRABAND Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 11:05, 12:10, 01:40, 02:45, 04:20, 05:20, 07:00, 08:00, 09:40, 10:35 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 12:15 UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING Fri-Sat-SunMon-Tue 12:10 HAYWIRE Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 11:00, 01:15, 03:30, 05:45, 08:05, 10:30 RED TAILS Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 11:10, 02:00, 04:50, 07:40, 10:30 THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue 02:15, 04:50, 07:25, 10:00 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D Fri-Sat-Sun-MonTue 02:35, 04:55, 07:15, 09:35 UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING 3D Fri-SatSun-Mon-Tue 11:00, 01:20, 02:30, 03:40, 04:50, 06:05, 07:10, 08:20, 09:30, 10:20 SUBJECT TO CHANGE. CALL THEATERS OR VISIT WWEEK.COM/MOVIETIMES FOR THE MOST UP-TODATE INFORMATION FRIDAY-THURSDAY, JAN. 20-26, UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED