HEADOUT
WILLAMETTE WEEK
GO: New Year’s Day is Friday, Jan. 1. Do whatever the hell you want.
WHAT TO DO THIS WEEK IN ARTS & CULTURE
WEDNESDAY DEC. 30 Mean Jeans, P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S., Therapists
JAHN ALEXANDER TEETSOV
[POP PUNK] In 2016, the Jeans will finally release the follow-up to 2012’s incredible On Mars, which found Portland’s (if not the world’s) best band joining the Ramones, Screeching Weasel and Green Day in the pop-punk pantheon. The Liquor Store, 3341 SE Belmont St. 9 pm. $6. 21+.
THURSDAY DEC. 31 Magic Sword, Minden, Foul Weather
[ELECTRO CLASH] With lightsabers back in vogue, it’s a good time to be Magic Sword, two masked, glowsword-wielding druids from the planet Boise whose music sounds like Daft Punk scoring an ’80s sci-fi epic. Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., 231-9663, dougfirlounge.com. 9 pm. $20 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.
New Year’s Day is the new New Year’s Eve
DJ Anjali & the Incredible Kid [DESI DANCE] For the 15th year, DJs Anjali and the Incredible Kid celebrate their New Year’s show with a mashup of Bollywood and bhangra sounds with Latin rhythms. Melody Ballroom, 615 SE Alder St., 232-2759. 9 pm-3 am. $27.50 advance, $40 at the door. 21+.
FRIDAY JAN. 1 New Year’s Day Rehab Brunch
[BOOZE] EastBurn will host a rehab brunch starting at 10 am, with a bloody mary bar and $2 mimosa refills that make it sound less like rehab than just...more drinking. EastBurn, 1800 E Burnside St., 236-2876. 10 am.
BY M ATTHEW SINGER msinger@wweek.com “New Year’s is the worst night of all to go out. People who don’t drink or party all year suddenly going all Kanye on you.” Well said, Ashton Kutcher, in the movie New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve is a sham. It’s a bridge-and-tunnel faux holiday invented by Dick Clark to keep Maroon 5’s career alive and give idiots like Ashton Kutcher shitty movies to star in. You’d think Portland would have outlawed it by now, seeing how it’s at least as detrimental to public welfare as plastic bags and smoking in parks, but no: It’s as bad here as anywhere else, with venues jacking up ticket prices to Uber-during-a-humanitarian-crisis levels, drunk assholes from Beaverton stumbling through the streets with insufficient transportation to get them safely out of the city, and Pink fucking Martini. Riff Raff once rang in the year at some warehouse in North Portland, and charged $300 to attend a pre-party in his hotel room. If there’s a better encapsulation of the douche-tastic horror of New Year’s Eve, I don’t know if my mind could handle it.
There is, however, one good thing about New Year’s Eve: Its federally sanctioned hangovers beget us New Year’s Day. And New Year’s Day is, quite simply, the greatest day of the year. The Fourth of July might celebrate freedom, but New Year’s Day is freedom—the freedom to do absolutely nothing. Dec. 31 is supposedly when we all hit the cosmic reset button to our lives, clearing out the cache of the past 12 months and promising, from that moment forward, to work toward being a better person. Then Jan. 1 is when we all say, “Oh, man, I need a day off.” It’s also got a rad parade, college football and a theme song by U2. (What does New Year’s Eve have? That Black Eyed Peas song where they all yell “mazel tov”?) But y’know the real reason why “all is quiet on New Year’s Day,” as Bono sings over Edge’s graceful droplets of guitar? Because no one is doing a goddamn thing, and they’re all loving it. It is a holiday without the faintest hint of obligation—no parties to attend, no meals to cook, no in-laws to visit, no dead historical figures to feel guilty about not taking a moment
to reflect on. My first New Year’s Day in Portland, I glued myself to a futon, drank a jug of Carlo Rossi and watched Commando, Team America, Timecop, Predator, Under Siege and then Commando again. Another time, I consumed five bloody marys and ate fondue while wearing sweatpants. In my younger years, when I lived in California, my friends and I took an impromptu trip to Vegas, stayed up all night, then drove home. Las Vegas is like if New Year’s Eve took a huge shit in the middle of the desert and it became a fully functioning city, but still: We did it just because, on that day, we could. I remember all of those afternoons better than any stroke-of-midnight make-out session or group bro-hug, and not just because I’ve successfully blacked out for most of them. A man once said, “True luxury is being able to own your time—to be able to take a walk, sit on your porch, read the paper, not take the call, not be compelled by obligation.” Y’know who that man was? Ashton Kutcher. You should listen to him. He played Steve Jobs.
SATURDAY JAN. 2 BONED
[INDIE FLICK] Hollywood actress and producer Angela Landis stars in and will attend the Portland premiere of this new indie comedy from Bizarro novelist Laura Lee Bahr. In it, struggling actress Samantha is swept into a plot of violent dognappers, gothic bondage cultists and starving artists. Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 223-4527. 6:30 and 9:30 pm. $4.
TUESDAY, JAN. 5 RUTH WARINER
[BOOKS] Wariner’s book, The Sound of Gravel, recalls her upbringing as the 39th of 42 children in a church that told its members God wanted to destroy the world and women needed to breed to get into heaven. Powell’s City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm. Free.
Willamette Week DECEMBER 30, 2015 wweek.com
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