Willamette Week, May 13, 2020 - Volume 46, Issue 29 - "Blast From the Past"

WILLAMETTE WEEK PORTLAND’S NEWSWEEKLY

“THIS IS WHERE MOMMY DANCES FOR MONEY.” P. 20 WWEEK.COM

VOL 46/29 05.13.2020

BLAST FROM THE PAST WE BROUGHT A PIECE OF MOUNT ST. HELENS TO YOU. PAGE 10

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

FINDINGS COURTESY OF LOCAL OCEAN

DIALOGUE

LOCAL OCEAN, PAGE 23

WHAT WE LEARNED FROM READING THIS WEEK’S PAPER VOL. 46, ISSUE 29.

Right-wing protesters are planning a beach trip. 4 The Portland City Council could reject a union contract for the first time in four decades. 7

A local artist has turned to writing “coffee porn” to make ends meet.

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The praise team at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church sings each Sunday to empty pews and a camera. 9

Yes, there is an International Church of Cannabis, and you can attend Sunday services via Zoom.

25

The Cowlitz tribe’s name for Mount St. Helens translates to

A former roommate gave Bobby Bermea a painting in lieu of paying the phone bill. 26

“Smoker.” 11

In the 1970s, Ford Pintos had a reputation for exploding in rearend collisions. 15

There’s a new horror novel about a book club fighting a handsome vampire. 26

A Portland stripper received a request for a private video of her stepping on cigarette butts. 20

A local director never works without his earbuds in. His actors prefer it that way. 27

Many food plants do not like the soil of Western Oregon. 22

ON THE COVER: The eruption of Mount St. Helens, photographed by Richard Lasher. Read more about the photo on page 15.

The owner of Local Ocean spent summers riding out storms on her father’s fishing boat. 23

One of Brian Dennehey’s final films before his death last month is about a man who is dying. 28

OUR MOST TRAFFICKED STORY ONLINE THIS WEEK:

Cannon Beach and Hood River didn’t want Portlanders visiting last weekend.

MASTHEAD EDITOR & PUBLISHER

ART DEPARTMENT

Mark Zusman

Creative Director Joy Bogdan Senior Production Designer Rowdy Rick Vodicka Illustration Intern Paola De La Cruz Photography Intern Mick Hangland-Skill

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News Editor Aaron Mesh Arts & Culture Editor Matthew Singer Assistant A&C Editor Andi Prewitt Staff Writers Nigel Jaquiss, Rachel Monahan, Tess Riski Copy Editor Matt Buckingham

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Last month, WW issued its endorsements in the May 19 primary. (You can find our choices on page 6.) As usual, our decisions were met with mixed reviews. Whether you agree with us or not, please remember to vote. Ballots must be returned by 8 pm on Tuesday, May 19.

TC, via wweek.com: “Voting yes on tax measures? Fools! Enjoy your cost of living increase because that’s what is. Don’t complain next year when you’re struggling to get by.”

Henry Kraemer, via Twitter: “I appreciate Willamette Week for its intrepid reporting. It’s an invaluable asset to the Portland and Oregon community. But man alive, did they blow it on these endorsements, basically top to bottom. I’m pretty floored. “[Mark] Hass was a big booster for Kitzhaber’s indefensible special session to give Nike a tax break and almost scuttled the effort to raise taxes on wealthy people and corporations during the last recession. But Shemia Fagan’s labor support is a deal breaker for Willamette Week? I just can’t.…I generally love Willamette Week, but their lust for pension cuts is a consistent problem.”

Steve, via wweek.com: “I wouldn’t bank on the public employees union buying too much advertising from you in the future.”

I’m a mathematician, so I approach problems in steps.

WW wrote in their endorsement [“Democracy, Delivered,” April 29, 2020], “Black and [Julia] DeGraw’s advocacy work is narrow, and they lack much in the way of managerial or budgetary experience.”

I’m sorry, what? As director of the Math Skills Center at Lewis & Clark College, I grew a shop with roughly 12 employees and a fivefigure budget to the multidepartment Symbolic and Quantitative Resource Center, where I oversaw 50 employees.

With a seven-figure grant, I advocated for—and accomplished—changes to testing and college math curricula. If you want to wade through layers of committees, accreditation and board hearings, try changing a standardized test. Or a curriculum. Through this work, I earned a position on the board of the National Numeracy Network.

I’ve managed big budgets, large departments, and my advocacy ranges from numeracy to maternity benefits to tenant rights.

Politely—write her name the fuck in Google before you call a woman “inexperienced” or “narrow” again. And if you value experience managing budgets, staff, and being an everyday working, renting person, vote for me, Margot Black.

Margot Black Candidate for City Commissioner, Position 2

Eugene, via wweek.com: “Hey, Willy Week, you’re crying about a need for money but not realizing this [homeless services] tax will affect your potential advertisers’ ability to pay?”

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR must include the author’s street address and phone number for verification.

Letters must be 250 or fewer words.

Submit to: 2220 NW Quimby St., Portland, OR 97210.

Email: mzusman@wweek.com

Andi Costa, via Facebook: “Not bad picks, except for [Sam] Adams. [Mingus] Mapps for me.

Looking at Wheeler, I think he’s learned a lot, especially in the last year, and his competition is really a joke anyway. Hopefully, they’re all serious about changing Portland’s form of government.

It’s killing this city, regardless who is in office.”

Brian Saville Allard, via Facebook: “Absolute trash. I don’t think you got a single one right.

Wheeler? ADAMS? Do you just go with who pays you the most?”

Dr. Know

MARGOT BLACK FOR CITY COUNCIL, GOOGLE IT

BY MART Y SMITH @martysmithxxx

My wife and I came back to Portland after a year of travel just as COVID-19 hit. While we were gone, a young couple bought the house next door, and now their frequent mid-pandemic backyard parties have me feeling a little crazy. Is this really OK? —Evan W. The class warrior in me is tempted to point out that, on the grand scale of provocations, there’s not that much daylight between “flaunting your youthful good health by having a barbecue in the middle of a pandemic” and “flaunting your financial security by traveling around the world at a time of unprecedented income inequality.” But I’m not going to do that, because it would be wrong.

Instead, Evan, I’m going to back you up: Assuming these gatherings are the kind of maskless, non-distanced affairs we (vaguely) recall from happier times, they’re irresponsible, even if they don’t degenerate into such obvious disease-vector activities as keg stands and body shots. Your neighbors should knock it off.

The irony here is that official sanction for such events is now tantalizingly within reach. Phase I of Oregon’s current plan to relax social distancing measures also proposes to allow gatherings of up to 25 people—practically Saturday night at Coachella by recent standards.

Of course, said Phase I doesn’t kick in until the

county in question can show a declining infection rate. The more sketchy epidemiological edgelordery quarantine-breakers try to pull, the less likely we are to hit that benchmark.

That said, it’s not hard to understand where your neighbors are coming from. Since March, the official policy on seeing friends and family has been a categorical “no social gatherings” with anyone outside your household. Meanwhile, people in your Instagram feed are taking “essential” trips to Walmart to buy those novelty slippers that look like you’re putting your foot in a pig’s mouth.

Under such circumstances, it’s easy to imagine the wounded bon vivant feeling that all the wiggle room has gone to crass commercialism, at the expense of our human relationships.

Naturally, many people seek to redress this perceived inequity through the time-honored human habit of cheating. Tune in next week to find out why that may be even more problematic than it sounds!

QUESTIONS? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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TESS RISKI

MURMURS

WE ARE

WORTH MORE

THAN MOST

PEOPLE THINK

WE ARE #FOSTERTHEFUTURE May is National Foster Care Month. As we navigate COVID-19, Project Lemonade's mission to support foster youth in crisis is more important than ever. Help us meet increased need and fundraise for the future by donating to our Foster the Future fundraiser. Donate in May and our sponsors will match your donation dollar-for-dollar. $50 can give a foster youth new shoes and a backpack. To learn more, visit www.projectlemonadepdx.org.

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

PROTESTERS AT OREGON CAPITOL ON MAY 2

CANDY FARM LAWSUIT DISMISSED: A Sandy woman who mounted a federal racketeering lawsuit against hundreds of Oregon cannabis businesses agreed May 1 to drop her case after a 22-month legal battle.

In August 2018, Laura Underwood sued over 200 businesses, all of which had done business with a cannabis company called Oregon Candy Farm, which borders Underwood’s property. As WW reported, Underwood argued that every grower or dispensary who did businesses with the farm “conspired to commit crimes that damaged the value of Underwood’s Sandy home,” because cannabis is illegal under federal law. Nathan Howard, president and founder of East Fork Cultivars and a defendant in the suit, celebrated the dismissal.

“They declared defeat,” he says. “What started with, I think, 270 people ended with two who kept fighting.” The plaintiff’s attorney, Rachel McCart, did not respond immediately to WW’s request for comment.

RIGHT-WING PROTESTERS PLAN BEACH TRIP: Conservative demonstrators are planning an event called “ReOpen the Coast” in Seaside, Ore., on May 16 to resist Gov. Kate Brown’s stay-home orders, The Daily Astorian first reported Sunday. One of the event’s creators, Haley Adams, is a protest organizer who rose to regional prominence in recent years for leading rallies in downtown Portland to support President Trump and agitate progressives.

The beach event is the latest escalation in a series of protests demanding that Oregon return to normal business during the COVID-19 pandemic. “This isn’t just about walking on the beach,” Adams said in a YouTube video posted May 9. “This is about your freedom.”

WHITE HOUSE WANTS NURSING HOME TESTS: The Trump administration is seeking a higher standard for COVID-19 testing at nursing homes than the Oregon governor’s office.

The White House is telling governors to test all staff and residents of nursing homes, the Associated Press reported May 11.

“We really believe that all 1 million nursing home residents need to be tested within next two weeks as well as the staff,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, told governors, according AP. Some Oregonians have called for testing at nursing homes, most notably emergency room doctor and Multnomah County Commissioner Sharon Meieran. “The fact that Oregon lags behind the federal administration in what they have recommended and done is shameful and unconscionable,” says Meieran. Gov. Kate Brown did not respond to a request for comment.

PORTLAND PROFESSOR WILL STUDY BALLOT SECURITY: Paul Gronke, a political science professor who runs the Early Voter Information Center at Reed College, has been awarded a $200,000 Andrew Carnegie fellowship, one of only 27 given nationally.

Gronke says he’ll use the funding to study and promote ballot accessibility and security in the 2020 general election, with a particular focus on the 10,000 officials across the country responsible for administering elections.

Gronke says such officials tend to be older women who are poorly paid. “It’s a little overwhelming to have this opportunity,” Gronke says, “and it’s a real honor.”

NEWS

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS WEEK

ELECTION 2020

Mailer Awards 2020 Candidates are talking to voters mostly with mailers.

Here are some we noticed.

BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS

and

R AC HE L M O N A H A N

503-243-2122

When door-knocking is impossible and forums are canceled, mailers are how candidates communicate. Little surprise that the May 2020 primary election has produced more brochures and postcards than any in recent memory. As WW does each campaign season, we picked the mailers that stood out, for reasons good and bad.

Least Accurate Endorsement Mayor Ted Wheeler’s reelection campaign has stumbled at times, never more so than when he claimed in a glossy mailer that Commissioner Chloe Eudaly had endorsed him—then admitted she didn’t.

Most Accurate Endorsement Mayoral challenger Sarah Iannarone produced a mailer focused on women voters—but one of five testimonials came from Kat Stevens, the partner of her campaign manager, Gregory McKelvey (the only man shown on the mailer). It’s unusual to tout the support of someone whose partner works for your campaign—but it won’t require a correction notice.

CAMPAIGN MONEY

Out of Balance Labor contributions in the Oregon secretary of state’s race raise hackles.

State Sen. Shemia Fagan (D-Portland) entered the Democratic secretary of state race late, but the state’s three largest public employee unions have allowed her to make up for lost time.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Service Employees International Union and the Oregon Education Association have collectively given Fagan more than either of her two opponents have raised in total.

Those opponents, Terrebone lawyer and natural resources consultant Jamie McLeod-Skinner and state Sen. Mark Hass (D-Beaverton), both entered the race more than five months before Fagan did.

The unions’ largesse—and a misleading website that the three unions paid for—prompted an unusual reaction in the normally deferential world of Democratic politics last week. State Rep. Alissa Keny-Guyer (D-Portland) is a longtime ally of Fagan’s, but in this race, she supports McLeod-

Most Effective Political Judo HereTogether, the campaign behind Metro’s $250 million-a-year homeless services measure, produced the darkest mailer we received, both literally and figuratively. It’s a red-on-black preemptive strike against the no campaign’s efforts to convince voters the measure would do all manner of bad things. (It won’t.) “Don’t believe the lies,” the mailer says.

Most Unintentionally Revealing Endorsement Jack Kerfoot, a retired consultant running for City Council Position 2, has run a lonely campaign, putting about $170,000 of his own money into his race—virtually all he has raised. The best he could do with that money: a two-sided testimonial from perennial candidate Bruce Broussard, who has run in just about every cycle since 1996 (he’s running for mayor this year, but sent no mailers).

Most Personal Touch Amid all the crisp photographs and slick graphic designs, Tera Hurst, another candidate for Position 2, captured our imagination with a handwritten note on her postcardsized missive. “I’ve known Tera for 10+ years and trust her to run the city,” the message reads.

It’s signed by a campaign supporter, and felt almost like a door-knock.

Best Capturing of the Zeitgeist Among the dozens of attempts to convey the unique circumstances of this election, City Council Position 2 candidate Dan Ryan was the only one to wear a mask on his mailer.

Ryan appears on the front and back wearing a one-use paper face mask—and handing out what appears to be a bag of onions.

A

Jamie McLeod-Skinner

B

State Sen. Mark Hass (D-Beaverton)

Entered race: Aug. 15, 2019 Total raised: $281,000 Three biggest donors: Jamie McLeod-Skinner for Oregon (2018 Congressional Committee): $21,540 Friends of Alissa Keny-Guyer: $9,755 Mary Lewis (individual, North Powder, Ore.): $4,500

Skinner. In the early morning hours of May 7, Keny-Guyer sent an angry email to Fagan, with copies to several other elected Democrats.

“In addition to the obscene amounts of money from so few sources going into your campaign, now there is an Independent Expenditure cleverly called OREGONIANS FOR BALLOT ACCESS, made to ‘appear’ neutral since it offers one example of an endorsement for Mark and two for Jamie,” wrote Keny- Guyer, who is stepping down after four terms. “No surprise, it is the first website that appears when you google any of the three candidate names.”

Fagan defended herself, saying the information presented on the website was accurate—and made no apologies that so much of her funding comes from unions.

“I am proud of the support I have received from member-funded labor organizations,” Fagan said.

“They represent the voices of Oregonians across the state who choose to pitch in a few bucks a month so they can have a say in the political process.”

Here’s a rundown of the three candidates, and the leading sources of their funding. NIGEL JAQUISS.

Entered race: Sept. 3, 2019 Total raised: $354,000 Three biggest donors: Dick Roy (Center for Earth Leadership): $50,000 Oregon Realtors PAC: $27,500 Rick Miller (CEO, Avamere Health): $15,600

C

State Sen. Shemia Fagan (D-Portland)

Entered race: Feb. 27, 2020 Total raised: $599,000 Three biggest donors: American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees: $177,000 Service Employees International Union: $158,000 Oregon Education Association/NEA: $125,000

A

B

C

Source: ORESTAR Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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BRIAN BURK

CHEAT SHEET

May 2020 Endorsements Your ballot has arrived. Here’s how we suggest you use it.

CONGRESS

U.S. House of Representatives 1st District Suzanne Bonamici (D) 3rd District | Earl Blumenauer (D) 5th District | Kurt Schrader (D) G. Shane Dinkel (R)

OREGON SECRETARY OF STATE Mark Hass (D)

OREGON LEGISLATURE

Senate District 14 | Kate Lieber (D) Senate District 18 | Ginny Burdick (D) House District 26 | Dan Laschober (R) House District 28 | Wlnsvey Campos (D) House District 33 | Dr. Maxine Dexter (D) House District 35 | Dacia Grayber (D) House District 36 | Dr. Lisa Reynolds (D) House District 37 | Ron Garcia (R) House District 42 | Rob Nosse (D) House District 46 | Khan Pham (D) House District 50 | Ricki Ruiz (D)

SIGN OF THE TIMES: Portland still has plenty of yard signs in this odd election cycle—but some simply sport messages of uplift.

CONTRIBUTION OF THE WEEK

Return to Senders

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Mayor | Ted Wheeler Position 1 | Carmen Rubio Position 2 | Dan Ryan Position 4 | Sam Adams

METRO COUNCIL

Portland City Council candidates didn’t spot these donations that broke the rules. We did.

The city’s new program to fund election campaigns with public dollars requires candidates to agree they won’t accept donations above $250. If candidates receive contributions larger than that, they have seven days to return them.

That’s been more of a struggle for some campaigns than others.

City Council candidate Dan Ryan, a nonprofit executive who is running to replace the late Nick Fish, received $945 in donations over the city’s cap that he failed to return within the seven-day limit.

Ryan and other candidates returned donations over the limit only after they were contacted by WW. “It’s something that’s being fixed,” Ryan told WW. “We’re working with our treasurer to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

He returned the contributions May 9.

RACHEL MONAHAN.

PORTLAND CITY COUNCIL

Total Contributions Candidates Failed to Return On Time $945 | Dan Ryan, nonprofit executive, candidate for City Council Position 2 $350 | Former Mayor Sam Adams, candidate for City Council Position 4 $100 | Latino Network executive director Carmen Rubio, candidate for City Council Position 1 $50 | Former professor Mingus Mapps, candidate for City Council Position 4

District 3 | Gerritt Rosenthal District 5 | Chris Smith District 6 | Bob Stacey

MULTNOMAH COUNTY District Attorney Mike Schmidt

BALLOT MEASURES Measure 26-209 Gas tax renewal Yes Measure 26-210 Homeless services tax Yes

NEWS

WESLEY LAPOINTE

This Is Not a Drill The Portland City Council already agreed to give police and firefighters a raise. Now it needs them to take pay cuts.

BY NIG E L JAQ UI SS

njaquiss@wweek.com

For decades, unions representing Portland’s firefighters and police officers have been good at negotiating with City Hall. That’s reflected in their latest labor contracts, which, among other things, contain annual raises in the range of 3 to 4 percent.

The economic devastation of COVID-19 may change all that.

On May 13, the Portland City Council is scheduled to vote to ratify contracts with the unions that represent firefighters, police commanding officers, and the 911 operators at the Bureau of Emergency Communications. Negotiations were completed in March when the economy was booming and the budget forecast was sunny. (A larger city labor contract, with rank-and-file police officers, is still being negotiated.) two days suggest the council does not want to sacrifice The COVID -19 pandemic has completely changed its leverage by signing the contacts without first getting the picture, and the City Council is now facing a short- concessions. Without such concessions, the City Counfall of $75 million in the 2020-21 budget. Mayor Ted cil just might reject the labor contracts entirely.

Wheeler has whittled that number down to $9.5 million, That would be a difficult choice—especially one week with a package of savings and cuts. He cut the pay of the before an election with both Mayor Wheeler and Comcity’s 1,700 nonunion employees, laid off or didn’t hire missioner Eudaly facing serious campaign challenges, nearly 1,000 parks workers and will tap the city’s sav- and at a time when members of the three unions, in ings and delay some spending. different ways, are on the front lines of the response to But Wheeler says he still needs city unions to help COVID-19. him find $9.5 million in savings.

“I was in a nursing home at 2 am the other night “It’s a very difficult situation,” says the council’s lon- in a full hazmat suit,” says Capt. Alan Ferschweiler, gest-serving member, Commissioner Amanda Fritz, who president of Portland Firefighters Association. “This is acknowledges that the mayor and unions are engaged in not normal for us.” last-minute conversations about the contracts.

The city may not have a better option. If the council That leaves Wheeler, Fritz and their colleagues with approves the contracts on Wednesday, it will then have three options, all of them unappealing. They could: to claw money back in separate negotiations. It cannot • Sign the contracts this link approval of the contracts week, approve the raises and to unions’ acceptance of then balance the city’s budfuture pay cuts, so if it rati“AS MUCH AS WE get by squeezing additional fies the contracts, the council savings from city employees loses all leverage.

APPRECIATE WHAT not represented by those That has union leaders bracunions. ing themselves for bad news.

THE PUBLIC SAFETY • Vote to approve the con“I don’t know what to WORKERS DO AND WHAT e x p e c t ,” s a y s L t . C r a i g tracts, then immediately ask the unions to give back some Morgan, president of the OTHER CITY STAFF DO, of the money.

Portland Police Command• Reject the contracts and go WE CAN’T PRINT MONEY.” ing Officers Association. “I back to the bargaining table, would not faint from surprise —COMMISSIONER AMANDA FRITZ something the city has not if they rejected our contract.” done in four decades.

On the eve of the vote, no Although it faces tough city commissioner was willing to reveal which of these choices, the city is in better shape than Metro, the three paths they’ll choose. regional government which depends on ticket sales That is unusual in a building where most votes are and taxes from travelers, or the state of Oregon, which telegraphed well in advance. However, talks continued depends on income taxes and the Oregon Lottery. through WW’s deadline as commissioners pressed for Metro has already laid off 40 percent of its staff. And concessions before the vote.

Gov. Brown this week told state agencies to prepare for Such negotiations this close to a vote are remarkable, cuts of 17 percent no matter the result—but they’re even more unusual The city of Portland’s revenues come from property because they must be conducted via phone calls and taxes, utility franchise taxes and corporate taxes, all Zoom video chats, thanks to COVID-19. of which are more stable during down economies than The signals emerging from City Hall over the past other governments’ funding sources.

WE CAN BE HEROES: A Portland firefighter drives with a mask in an April parade to thank hospital workers.

To balance Portland’s budget next year, Wheeler has proposed cutting all bureaus’ general fund budgets 5.6 percent.

Police and fire are the largest bureaus, together consuming well more than 60 percent of the city’s halfbillion-dollar general fund budget. And personnel is 74 percent of the police budget and 85 percent of the firefighters’.

Wheeler will spend down reserves and one-time funds and wring savings elsewhere, but he wants big public safety cuts as well: a total of $6.5 million from Fire & Rescue and nearly $12 million from the Police Bureau.

At his budget rollout May 8, Wheeler said he hoped to achieve those savings through negotiated compensation reductions rather than layoffs but “everything’s on the table.”

If the council approves the labor contracts, the unions could later refuse to make concessions, potentially forcing the city to squeeze savings out of nonrepresented employees or members of other unions.

Ferschweiler says he is in constant contact with Wheeler to find a way to avert the council from rejecting his members’ contract.

“Our members want to feel like they are being honored and treated respectfully, and I think the council wants to do that,” he says.

Like Ferschweiler, Morgan, the PPCOA president, says he’d like a bit more transparency from Wheeler.

“Being members of the community, we are not ignorant of what’s going on in society as whole,” Morgan says. “We have friends and neighbors who have been laid off, and we don’t think we are immune from that.

We just really want the city to show us exactly where the shortfalls are.”

Complicating matters is the death of Commissioner Nick Fish on Jan. 2, which left the council with just four members. In the case of a 2-2 deadlock, according to the city charter, a contract vote fails.

None of the commissioners would comment directly on what will happen Wednesday. Fritz gave a hint, however: “As much as we appreciate what the public safety workers do and what other city staff do, we can’t print money.”

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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J U S T I N K AT I G B A K

NEWS

Cleared for Takeoff Oregon appears in much

better position to reopen than many U.S. states.

Revival Meeting

A lawsuit against Gov. Kate Brown reunites old allies from the conservative edge of Oregon politics.

BY TE SS R I S K I

tess@wweek.com

By issuing a series of executive orders shutting down Oregon’s economic and social life, Gov. Kate Brown slowed the spread of COVID-19 in the state.

She also galvanized conservative forces who are using her orders as an organizing tool.

Some of those forces are among the plaintiffs currently suing Brown in Baker County Circuit Court. They include 15 evangelical churches, three of the state’s most conservative legislators, a law firm with decadelong ties to antiLGBTQ legal campaigns, a self-styled county sheriff, and a former gubernatorial candidate.

“This [lawsuit] just snowballed,” says Salem lawyer Ray Hacke of the Pacific Justice Institute, a California-based conservative civil liberties and religious freedom law firm.

“Before I knew it, I was getting calls from pastors and churchgoers from literally all over the state.”

This week, a Baker County circuit judge may decide whether the lawsuit is a serious threat to Brown’s control of the state’s pandemic response.

On May 6, Hacke’s firm filed suit against Brown, challenging her emergency powers during the pandemic. The lawsuit seeks an injunction of Brown’s March 8 emergency declaration so that churches can reopen for worship services without her blessing.

A handful of states across the country, including Kansas and Kentucky, have seen similar suits in the past two weeks. But in those states, plaintiffs relied heavily on a separation of church and state argument based on the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The plaintiffs in Oregon are arguing almost exclusively that the governor violated an article of the state’s constitution.

The lawsuit claims Brown violated Article X-A of the Oregon Constitution, which says she had to hold a legislative session within 30 days of declaring the state of emergency. “This is not just a religious liberty case. This is a matter of holding Gov. Brown accountable to following the constitution,” Hacke says. “She cannot unilaterally act.”

Hacke is an acquaintance of Kevin Mannix, the former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party who ran in 2002 and 2006 for governor and spent decades drafting ballot measures to reshape Oregon’s tax policies.

A few weeks ago, Hacke mentioned to Mannix that his 8

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

CHURCH AND STATE: Rep. Bill Post (R-Keizer) is one of three state lawmakers joining 15 churches in seeking an injunction of the governor’s executive orders.

firm was considering suing Brown. Mannix then connected Hacke to churches across the state.

“This is government gone wild,” Mannix says, noting that Brown has issued over a dozen executive orders since the COVID-19 pandemic hit Oregon. “On April 7, she no longer had the power to rewrite laws. All of this stuff should have been taken to the Legislature.”

And on May 11, as WW first reported, three lawmakers— some of the most conservative in the Legislature—joined as petitioners: state Sen. Dennis Linthicum (R-Klamath Falls), Rep. Bill Post (R-Keizer) and Rep. Mike Nearman (R-Independence). “Places of worship are looking for one hour, once per week,” Post tells WW. “How can we not have that, when we do have the above stores open 12 hours or more seven days a week?”

On May 12, several Eastern Oregon businesses and local officials signed onto the lawsuit, including Grant County Sheriff Glenn Palmer, who drew national attention in 2016 for openly sympathizing with an armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

The 15 churches signed on as plaintiffs appear to be overwhelmingly white, evangelical and conservative.

Hacke credits four of the plaintiffs—all different branches of the charismatic Calvary Chapel, including one in Portland—for getting the lawsuit off the ground: “They’ve really rallied the troops,” Hacke says of Calvary.

Hacke’s group has a history of waging anti-LGBTQ legal battles. The law firm’s founder, Brad Daucus, was a spokesman for California’s Proposition 8, which sought to keep same sex marriage illegal.

His firm become more prominent in Oregon in the past two years. In 2018, it sued the Sutherlin School District for allowing a transgender student, who identified as a boy, to use the boys’ restroom (the case was later dismissed). It is currently representing a group called Abolish Abortion Oregon, which is suing the city of Grants Pass for trying to curtail the group’s ability to evangelize.

Western States Center, which watchdogs extremist groups in the Pacific Northwest, says it’s concerned by the firm’s ties. “We see this lawsuit as another example of a farright group seeking to exploit this crisis to build political power,” says deputy director Amy Herzfeld-Copple.

But the firm is making a serious legal argument, says Michael Fuller, a civil rights lawyer in Portland.

“Who knows how a court will rule, but it’s not frivolous,” Fuller says. “To test the law, you have to break the law. Gov. Brown is arguably testing the law with her orders.”

The lawsuit’s preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Thursday. Hacke says he is confident—and eager to return to worship at his church, Salem First Baptist.

“The way our founders drafted both U.S. and state constitutions,” he says, “there has to be a thumb on the scale in favor of freedoms.”

This Friday, much of Oregon may be starting back to work.

On May 8, Gov. Kate Brown began accepting applications from counties seeking to reopen some businesses from statewide stay-home orders. By May 12, 32 of Oregon’s 36 counties had submitted a proposal.The three Portland-area counties are waiting a few more weeks.

The state has seen a rising number of COVID -19 cases and an increase in the percentage of tests coming back positive. That could give Oregon pause.

But by one metric the governor will use, every Oregon county qualified as of May 8: All 36 had seen a 14-day decline in COVID-19 hospitalizations. Each county has to be ready to trace new infections and have medical facilities and lodging ready to care for patients who test positive.

Only time will tell whether Oregon’s reopening was timely or too hasty. But a look at how Oregon compares with other states helps explain why Gov. Brown is comfortable pushing forward. Compared with many other states venturing back out, Oregon is in relatively good shape. RACHEL MONAHAN.

COVID-19 INFECTION RATE OREGON | 81 per 100,000 (5th lowest in nation) CALIFORNIA | 174 per 100,000 (18th) WASHINGTON | 232 per 100,000 (27th) GEORGIA | 330 per 100,000 (34th) NEW YORK | 1,718 per 100,000 (worst)

COVID-19 DEATH RATE OREGON | 3 per 100,000 (7th lowest in nation) CALIFORNIA | 7 per 100,000 (21st) WASHINGTON | 13 per 100,000 (35th) GEORGIA | 14 per 100,000 (36th) NEW YORK | 137 per 100,000 (worst) Source: The Washington Post

PERCENTAGE OF POSITIVE COVID-19 TESTS, APRIL 30 TO MAY 6 4.7% 3.5%

13.8%

6%

8.5%

Source: National Public Radio

BRIAN BURK

NEWS

Streams of Living Water Portland’s black congregations are being separated—again. But this time, they have Facebook.

BY SAN T I E L I JA H H O L LE Y

Pastor Walter Hills sits in a chair on a raised altar, in front of a large gold crucifix. A 36-year-old African American man, dressed in a dark suit jacket and white button-up shirt, Hills leads his congregation in worship, thanking God “for giving us a place where we can go to you in prayer.”

But on this Sunday in April, Hills is by himself.

He sits in a virtually empty church in North Portland, preaching to his flock live via Facebook.

“Everything has changed,” says Hills, pastor of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church in North Portland’s Boise neighborhood. “My message has changed. The presentation has changed. It has literally impacted every aspect of what I do.”

Like bars, coffee shops and schools, Oregon’s houses of worship have been following strict social distancing guidelines to help slow the spread of COVID-19. Churches have closed their doors to their congregations and have seen their collection plates go empty for months.

Some pastors bridle at those rules: Ten conservative evangelical churches sued to reopen last week.

Portland’s black community depends on churches more than most. But it has also had to grapple for years with greater obstacles to reaching the buildings—thanks to decades of displacement to the edge of town.

Craig Brown, pastor of North Portland’s St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, says his congregation has fully embraced livestreaming and online video conferencing since the arrival of COVID-19 and social distancing measures. He says it’s had a silver lining, effectively reuniting an exiled community.

“A lot of my members have been pushed out towards the Numbers,” he says. “What this pandemic has made us realize is that God is calling us to use other avenues to reach people. What else is there to do? We have all this technology, so we might as well put it to use to reach people.”

GOOD NEWS: When Craig Brown preaches at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, few congregants are in the sanctuary—but hundreds are watching the video stream.

church they’d once lived a short stroll from.

Clifford Chappell, pastor of St. Johns All Nations Church of God in Christ, says how his small North Portland church, consisting of about 50 members, has “lost a lot of people during the almost 20 years that I’ve pastored here. We’ve probably seen our congregation turn over at least a half-dozen times in that time frame, mostly because of gentrification. It’s challenging to have a church that’s stable when you’re having that kind of turnover.”

Still, the pandemic created new problems. Church leaders now not only need to account for the well-being of their members but the solvency of their churches.

Though not required to pay taxes, the church still has myriad bills—building expenses, utilities, staffing—and churches, like many other institutions, largely depend on people coming through the doors. Jeffrey England, deacon at St. Paul MBC, puts it this way: “The Portland is famously not a bills are going to be coming, religious city. But one key regardless of whether the exception is the city’s black doors are closed or not.” population. The church proDr. T. Allen Bethel, of vided refuge and encourage—PASTOR CRAIG BROWN Northeast Portland’s Marament during enslavement, natha Church, attributes Jim Crow, and the civil rights the church’s revenue loss to movement. two factors: the statewide Portland’s black residents have faced decades of disban on in-person Sunday gatherings, where the church placement, by urban renewal projects and discriminatory real estate practices. The black community, once receives much of its cash offerings, and members who centralized in the Albina neighborhood, has since scat- have recently lost their jobs due to the shutdown and can tered across the city, largely out to the areas east of 82nd no longer contribute the same amount in tithes or donations. “We’re trying to give options to those who need Avenue, in a part of the city known as the Numbers.

“Not only do we have to meet the needs of the com- them,” Bethel says, “but the impact financially on the munity we’re in,” Hills says, “we also have to meet the congregation is taking a toll.”

Brown estimates offerings at his church have dropped needs of our members who don’t live in our community, about 20 percent since the pandemic. “But we have and those sets of needs are completely different.”

Hills and Brown relate how many older members of picked up a lot of additional viewers with online streamtheir respective churches have had to contend with long, ing,” he says. “Our online giving had a really good spike in early-morning commutes, often depending on public the middle of April, and it looks like that trend is going to transportation, to attend Sunday service at the same continue, but I don’t know how long that will last.”

“I WANT TO BE ABLE TO STILL GIVE THE SAME KIND OF ENERGY.”

Each church takes a different approach to livestreaming.

Hills has been streaming from church, seated casually and unaccompanied on the altar. Chappell broadcasts from his own home, and Bethel will also begin streaming from home. Brown has been streaming to Facebook and Instagram from the church sanctuary, backed by a reduced praise team, including a couple of musicians and singers, and a few assistants to help on the tech side. The pews, however, remain empty.

“I was going to do it from my home, but it just doesn’t have the right feel for me,” Brown says. “I want to be able to still give the same kind of energy I would give on a Sunday morning if everyone was here.”

“With this virtual church, people are able to go online and feel connected, they’re able to see each other,” Chappell says. “They’ve expressed to me that they miss meeting in a church, but if they can’t meet there, this is the next best thing.”

Pastors have been finding other ways to engage their homebound congregations, including offering conference call lines for older members who don’t have access to a computer or the internet.

Brown says he’ll keep holding services digitally until public health experts say it’s safe to gather. He has no interest in pressuring the state to reopen his sanctuary.

“A lot of churches, including my own, may be hurting a little bit financially,” he says, “but it’s better for us to be physically healthy, so we can eventually start welcoming everybody back.”

Moreover, he doesn’t expect the return to physical services to be easy.

“It’s going to be hard for a lot of churches,” Brown says. “We’re going to have to pick and choose what members come to church on certain days, to adhere to social distancing.”

Hills will continue to livestream his sermons from an otherwise empty sanctuary, leading his homebound congregation in prayer.

“We’re resilient people and we find ways to bounce back and to respond to whatever adversity we face,” he says. “We have a tendency to make great things out of bad situations. I am confident that, one way or another, we will find a way to allow this to do the same.”

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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A BLAST FROM THE PAST We brought a piece of Mount St. Helens to you.

Organized by the Portland Art Museum and curated by Dawson Carr, Ph.D., the Janet and Richard Geary Curator of European Art

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

Forty years ago this week, Portland awoke to find the earth in the sky.

At 8:32 am, on an unseasonably warm Sunday, what had always seemed an abstract threat, a product more of Hollywood than of the Cascadian landscape, turned real and deadly. Citizens felt a tremor beneath their feet—and looked north. There was no mistaking the boiling cloud on the horizon.

Fifty-two miles from Portland, Mount St. Helens, a long-dormant volcano that had last erupted 180 years before, torpedoed gas and molten rock 19 miles into a pristine forest. The blast killed 57 people, interrupted daily life and commerce, and sent Portlanders searching for masks to cover their faces.

Is it odd that so many of us now long to revisit that moment?

Nostalgia for the volcano is perhaps a measure of the scale of catastrophe we’re now experiencing. The parallels between St. Helens and COVID-19 are inescapable: natural fury, death and, of course, the masks. (“Although air-filter face masks were said to be generally ineffective in removing the smaller and most dangerous particles,” WW reported in early June 1980, “mask sales continued at a brisk pace.”) When people refuse to stay home to avoid spreading the virus, it’s hard not to think of Harry Truman, who wouldn’t leave his lodge on the shore of Spirit Lake and insisted his mountain would never hurt him.

But the ashfall, while gloomy, was finite and visible. What confines us to our homes now is unseen. The virus gives us nothing to gawk at, no power to show us our scale on the planet.

The pandemic is defined by emptiness: deserted

streets, vacant buildings, missing people. Compared with a volcano, it brings the terror without the majesty.

Little wonder that St. Helens has such vivid appeal. Few of us are taking mountain vacations these days, so a pilgrimage to the mountain is out. The COVID-19 interruption has been so complete, it shut down a variety of celebrations of the anniversary of Mount St. Helens’ eruption. The Portland Art Museum launched its exhibition Volcano! Mount St. Helens in Art just weeks before a governor’s order closed public spaces. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the Mount St. Helens Institute will present a livestream with celebrated scientist Bill Nye at 6 pm Saturday, May 16. (For more anniversary events, visit mshinstitute.org/mshinside.)

You can’t go to the mountain. So we’re bringing it to you.

The art museum spent much of the past six weeks preparing a virtual tour of its exhibition. The curator, Dawson Carr, allowed WW extraordinary access to the works on display, permitting us to re-create—on a smaller scale— the experience of wandering through the galleries.

In the following pages, you’ll see the role St. Helens played in the culture of Native Americans and pioneers, the imprint its eruption left on the imaginations of this city’s best artists— including science fiction genius Ursula K. Le Guin—and the way it still looms over our region, as bright and strange as the moon.

Think of this as a trip to the museum you can enjoy from home. Or consider it a time machine, to a Sunday morning when everything changed.

AARON MESH.

Mount St. Helens has been a sacred place to Native Americans for thousands of years. It is known as Lawetlat’la (“Smoker”) to the Cowlitz Indian Tribe and the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.

Indigenous peoples along the Columbia River used the substance of adjacent volcanoes—particularly basalt, andesite and obsidian—to create objects of great beauty for utilitarian, cultural, and aesthetic purposes.

The extraordinary sculptures displayed here were made from various forms of basalt, the most common volcanic rock, which is formed by the rapid cooling of lava near the surface.

Albert Bierstadt was already internationally famous when he visited Oregon and Washington for the second time in September and October 1889. During this second trip, he probably made sketches he used in creating this painting in his New York studio.

Columbia River artist. Anthropomorphic Figure, pre-contact. Paint on basalt.

The Fred and Rosetta Harrison Collection; Museum Purchase and Partial Gift of Mike Jungert, Shelley Engh, and Robin McGinn, 2001.21.1 Albert Bierstadt (American, born Germany, 1830–1902). Mount St. Helens, Columbia River, Oregon, 1889. Oil on canvas. Collection of L.D. “Brink” Brinkman, LDB Corp., Kerrville, Texas, L2019.94.1

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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Henk Pander (American, born Netherlands, born 1937). Eruption of Saint Helens from Cable Street, 1981. Oil on linen. City of Portland Public Art Collection, courtesy of the Regional Arts and Culture Council, L2019.45.1 This painting is the culmination of a great many works I did in response to the eruptions of Mount St. Helens. The work was based on studies I made on July 22, 1980, when the eruption appeared against a clear summer sky. One of the studies is included in this exhibition. The view is from my yard on Southwest Cable Street.

The painting is a reflection on the experience as seen in a mirror. It also recalls that it was a huge media event at the time. —Henk Pander

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Barbara Noah (American, born 1949). Tag III, 1981. Oil on photolinen. Collection of the artist, Seattle, ©1981 Barbara Noah, for changes and additions to a Mount St. Helens image courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey, L2019.93.1 When Mount St. Helens first erupted with small emissions, I visited frequently, driving up logging roads to photograph it. I was amazed by the sublime spectacle, but also amused by the picnic atmosphere of crowds in lawn chairs lined up to watch it like a reality TV show. It became personified, a mighty and even benevolent sentient being communing with onlookers.

On the morning of May 18, 1980, I was in Seattle. When I drove down later in the day, access to the volcano was blocked. The mood was somber, no longer celebratory. The glorious spectacle had been transformed. The volcano, a dispassionate force of nature, had taken on a new persona.

Tag III represents this transformation through the lens of pareidolia, which is the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, e.g., seeing faces in things. The ensuing altered and anthropomorphic image alludes to Mount St. Helens’ transformations, from the ridiculous to the sublime and from Muppet to monster.

—Barbara Noah

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

Paul Marioni (American, born 1941). Mount St. Helens Vase, 1980. Blown glass. Tacoma Art Museum, Gift of Paul Marioni, L2019.70.1 I made this vase from pure volcanic ash collected on the day of the big eruption.

As soon as we heard about the ashfall, Rob Adamson and I drove to eastern Washington and collected a barrel of the stuff. That night, we melted it and I blew the vase. It looked black, but was actually a very dark green. The iridescent color came from a metallic fuming agent. This piece is the only one blown from pure ash that I know of.

—Paul Marioni

Emmet Gowin (American, born 1941). Debris flow at the Northern Base of Mount St. Helens, Looking South, Washington,1983. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist, L2019.71.22

Charles Arnoldi (American, born 1946). Untitled, 1983.

Acrylic, modeling paste and branches on plywood.

Portland Art Museum, Bequest of Marcia Simon Weisman, 1997.191.1

Emmet Gowin (American, born 1941). Erosion on the floor of a drained lake formed by debris flow in the Toutle River Valley area of Mount St. Helens, 1983. Gelatin silver print.

Courtesy of the artist, L2019.71.17

A major figure on the West Coast in the movement to redefine the nature and materials of painting in the 1970s, Charles Arnoldi was mesmerized by the television coverage of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The images of thousands of felled trees and the ragged crater prompted him to reintroduce actual sticks in combination with painting in his post-eruption works through the next decade. In Untitled, 1983, Arnoldi creates a dense, powerful work that is clotted in highly fluid, directional arrangements of sticks that overlap and collide to define both the painting’s surface and silhouette. The cultivated disequilibrium of the work’s elegant veneered surface of modeling paste and sticks produces a formally beautiful yet poignantly emotional evocation of the triggering event.

—Bruce Guenther

Emmet Gowin (American, born 1941). Debris flow at the Northern Base of Mount St. Helens, Looking South, Washington,1983. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist, L2019.71.22 Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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Diane Cook and Len Jenshel (American, born 1954; American, born 1949). Log, Pumice Plain, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, Wash., 2009; printed 2019. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artists, L2019.84.3 Henk Pander (American, born Netherlands, born 1937). Ursula K. Le Guin in Red Zone, 1981. Ink on paper.

Courtesy of the artist, L2019.68.2 In October 1981, three friends—artist Henk Pander, photographer Ron Cronin, and author Ursula K. Le Guin—managed to finagle a oneday pass into the Red Zone, the restricted area around the mountain. Le Guin later described the experience: …the fear I felt that day went deeper than the physical. After driving miles up through the endless green vitality of a great forest, to turn a corner and enter a world of grey ash, burnt stumps, and silence—from the complexity of flourishing life into the awful simplicity of death: the fear I felt was metaphysical. And the scale of it all was beyond comprehension. I tried to write about it afterwards, in poetry and essay.

I never felt I could describe it adequately, hardly hint at it.

—From In the Blast Zone: Catastrophe and Renewal on Mount St. Helens, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2008 14

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

Diane Cook and Len Jenshel (American, born 1954; American, born 1949). Moonrise over Mount St. Helens, Hwy 504, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, Wash., 2009; printed 2019. Archival pigment print.

Courtesy of the artists, L2019.84.2

The Monitoring Spider. On loan courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey, David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, Wash.

Breadcrust Bomb. Dacite erupted from Mount St. Helens, May 1980. On loan courtesy of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.

The Monitoring Spider, designed by USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory, is recent technology that helps scientists quickly monitor an active volcano while reducing risks to scientists. The sturdy Spider is deployed by a helicopter, and is designed to transmit data in real time to the Cascades Volcano Observatory. The Spider can detect small changes in the ground shape (or deformation) with GPS, lightning and/or low-frequency sounds from explosions, gas emissions, and shallow earthquakes.

Breadcrust bombs are volcanic rocks ejected as semi-molten lava during an eruption. The outer surface begins to harden while traveling through the air and becomes brittle. Meanwhile, the hot molten rock inside forms gas bubbles and begins to expand causing the outer surface to crack, like a piece of popcorn.

Into Thin Ash For decades, one of the most striking photos of Mount St. Helens was also one of its biggest mysteries.

Both the Spider and the Breadcrust Bomb are part of a learning space created in collaboration with the Mount St Helens Institute and U.S. Geological Survey’s David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory.

Visit the virtual exhibition at portlandartmuseum.org/volcano-online.

BY MATTHEW SIN GER

msinger@wweek.com

It looks like a photo taken by a dead man.

In the foreground, a red Ford Pinto with a vintage motorcycle hitched to its bumper is parked on a dirt road lined with trees. Behind it, an ominous tower of ash rises miles into the sky, seemingly just over the hill from where the camera is positioned.

It is among the more astonishing photos depicting the eruption of Mount St. Helens—few images capture the beauty and horror of the moment so directly, and in such painterly tones.

The picture is well known. A copy hangs in the Johnston Ridge Observatory, in the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, and it has been featured in exhibits commemorating the disaster.

But for almost 40 years, the context of the photo appeared lost to time. Where exactly was it taken? Who took it? And how did they make it out alive? Or did they?

Dan Strohl isn’t sure where he first saw the photo, but as the online editor at Vermont-based Hemmings Motor News, he’s come across it a lot.

The image is particularly popular in automotive circles—1970s Pintos famously had rear fuel tanks prone to explode in rear-end collisions, so for car enthusiasts, the sight of one parked in front of an erupting volcano made for an apt visual metaphor.

And the more Strohl saw it on message boards and social media feeds, the more intrigued he became.

“It got to the point where I said, ‘I’ve got to find out what’s going on,’” says Strohl, who worked in Roseburg, Ore., early in his journalism career.

Last year, Strohl began scouring the internet for every instance of the photo, in hopes of finding a stray comment that might hint at who took it.

He eventually found one.

A guy on Facebook named Gary Cooper claimed an old co-worker took the photo. According to

Cooper, the photographer was Richard Lasher, who worked with him at the Boeing plant in Frederickson, Wash.

Cooper told Strohl that Lasher left his house that morning in his Pinto with plans to ride his motorcycle around Spirit Lake, an area that received the brunt of the impact from the eruption. He overslept and made it only part of the way by the time the volcano blew.

“Had Lasher made it to Spirit Lake,” Strohl later wrote, “he’d almost certainly have died.”

Strohl estimates the photo was taken along the forest roads of Gifford Pinchot National Forest, possibly near the town of Randle. In Cooper’s account, Lasher stopped so abruptly he bent the forks of his Yamaha IT Enduro bike. The ash cloud overtook him, but he eventually made it out, and even went back the next day, capturing photos of the devastation, and ended up getting airlifted out and spending the night in jail.

Two other former co-workers corroborated Cooper’s story. None, however, knew of Lasher’s current whereabouts. He had a Facebook page as late as 2018, but it has since been deleted. Most assumed he’d died.

WW was unsuccessful in our own attempt to track Lasher down. None of the Richard Lashers with Washington telephone phone numbers returned our calls. An inquiry with the U.S. Forest Service sparked a game of telephone tag that ended in a dead end.

Strohl has not received any further updates in the 11 months since publishing his article, and doesn’t expect he will. But there is another element of the mystery he’d like to solve: What happened to Lasher’s car?

“If you have a red Pinto hatchback with a lot of volcanic ash in the seams,” he wrote in his article, “get in touch with us.”

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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STREET

A Brief Tour of Portland Street Art

The number of businesses in Portland with plywood covering their windows right now casts an eerie pall even on sunny spring days. Of course, many of those boarded-up businesses are just waiting to reopen. In April, the nonprofit Portland Street Art Alliance put out a call to local businesses interested in having a Portland artist create temporary murals on their property—a way to both beautify the urban landscape and give artists some much-needed work. Here’s a look at some of the standouts so far.

Photos by Mick Hangland-Skill

Pearl District | Artist unknown

Pearl District | Artist unknown

Pearl District | Artist unknown

Ankeny Alley | Forest Wolf Kell

Ankeny Alley | Forest Wolf Kell

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

SE Hawthorne Street | Artist unknown, Emily Kepulis, Nori Rinaldo

SE Foster Road | Mad One

SE Foster Road | Mad One, Borrowed Times Sign and Design, artist unknown

NW 12th Avenue | Artist unknown

SW Ankeny Alley | Sean Lambert and Lambert42

SE Division Street | Nori Rinaldo Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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GET INSIDE

WHAT TO DO WHILE YOU'RE STUCK AT HOME

Q( UA RA N TIN E ) & A

CRAFT THI S

By Amy Zimmerman

Weed is a quarantine essential—even the government says so. Most of us are probably smoking more right now than we ever have. But imagine this nightmare scenario: It’s late. Your piece slips out of your hand and shatters. You’ve already run through all your rolling papers. Pipes made out of food are a waste, and puffing out of aluminum or plastic is just a bad idea. Never fear: Here are quick and easy instructions to make a bong out of stuff found around your house. Does it look like something out of a mad scientist’s lab? Maybe. Does that make it more fun to smoke out of? For sure.

Elle Stanger

Sex worker, writer and educator WW: You dance at Lucky Devil Lounge, which has received international media attention for its business pivots during the pandemic. What it’s like working there right now?

Elle Stanger: It feels like a very unique position to be in when so many things in the business are stagnant for us—we can’t go to shifts, we can’t interact with our customers or our co-workers the same—and also to have so much media attention on us. Folks see a lot of media coverage and assume we’re all making a ton of money. But we’re all making a small fraction of anything we did prior to this.

You’ve been supplementing your income with more webcam work, but you also have an 8-year-old daughter. How do you balance that?

My daughter slowly learns about Mommy’s work in an age-appropriate context. When she was little, I would drive by the strip club and say, “This is the building where Mommy dances for money.” When she gets older, I’ll explain to her that I’ve touched other people’s bodies in other ways and it was consensual, while explaining to her that some of Mommy’s work is legal, some of it is not legal, all of it is consensual, and sometimes the people who make the rules don’t know what’s best for the populations they make them about.

What do you think the long-term effects of this pandemic will be on sex workers?

Sex work is always changing because the technology is always changing, and there are always different movements, mostly against us to criminalize or limit the work or restrict it. I wish I knew what the future held.

See the full video interview at wweek.com/distant-voices.

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

PAO L A D E L A C R U Z

What else have you been doing to pass the time?

I’ve actually had people from around the country, and around the world, actually, ask if I do custom videos—I’m so glad I invested in a quality stripper pole for my home a few years ago. I’ve been making individual clips in high resolution that I email to people. I had someone ask me if I’d send a video of me stepping on cigarettes. I don’t smoke cigarettes, I smoke joints, so I asked if they can be cannabis butts. People are into so many things.

Amy Zimmerman is the social media manager for the Portland chapter of Tokeativity cannabis crafting club.

MAY 13-19 CO LO R T H IS

I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y @ WA LT O O N S

R E A D T HI S

The Knockout Queen

by Rufi Thorpe “It feels like the kind of novel you rarely come across—I hate to say I laughed and I cried, but, well, I did. With the world as it is I was in deep need of both, and this book is a total transportation device that will make you forget the news and remember the essence of your humanity. It’s a deep and complex look at a very unlikely friendship between the ‘queen of North Shore,’ a 6-foot-3 volleyball star named Bunny Lampert, and Michael, a closeted teenage boy living with his aunt after his mother goes to prison. Their teenage lives become increasingly complicated after an unspeakable act of violence changes their paths forever. The sentences feel like beautiful little explosions of truth: “Some thoughts are just too expensive to have…,” Bunny muses at one point. I loved the voice of Michael, who tells the story. He is a wise yet urgent narrator, with a keen eye for bizarre detail, dark humor, and surprising insights. It’s a look at how time changes friendships and what we make of the cards we are dealt.”

—Chelsea Bieker, author of the novel Godshot See more reading recommendations on page 26.

Hey, remember doing things? So do we! Relive some of your favorite Portland activities through the miracle of coloring. Color this image, and add a drawing of what you've been watching at home to the screen. Then let us see it on social media with the hashtag #colorthispdx.

HE A R T HI S

How to Get Into Dub Techno With most of the circumstances under which I would listen to pop music no longer available to me—going somewhere on the bus, hanging with friends—my musical tastes have gravitated back toward ambient, ambient techno, and one of my personal favorites: dub techno. It sounds like a fake name your mom might make up to describe something kids would be dancing to, but dub techno is the bees’ knees: mileswide chords that feel like sinking your head into a nebula, stoned beats that drag you along with them for as long as you let them. Start with the distinctly Northwestern sounds of Vancouver, B.C.’s Loscil, whose albums First Narrows and Endless Falls feel like a cold rain against your window. For a gentle daytime drift, seek out Iceland’s Yagya and his Rigning from 2009, or shell out some cash on Bandcamp for Brock Van Wey’s White Clouds Drift On and On. Gaze out at the city at night with Deepchord Presents: Echospace’s Liumin, recorded with found sounds from Tokyo. But the gnarled, twisted roots of the genre lie with Germany’s Basic Channel, whose Radiance EP is the closest musical approximation to being dropped into the ocean unexpectedly. The duo's 2003 release w/ the Artists, issued as Rhythm & Sound and recorded with an international cast of singers, explains how this nebulous music connects to Jamaican dub. It’s one of the most respectful cross-cultural collaborations ever—and it slaps. DANIEL BROMFIELD. Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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WOODLEYWONDERWORKS / FLICKR

H E RE ’ S AN IDE A

Start a Pandemic Garden Yes, you’re going to kill a few plants at first.

Here’s how to keep going.

BY CHR ISTEN MCCU R DY

GET DAILY UPDATES ON HOW CORONAVIRUS IS AFFECTING PORTLAND

@CMcCurdyPDX

Just about everybody I know is planting a garden this spring.

It makes sense. Whether you’re concerned about long-term food security, want to have access to fresh produce in between trips to New Seasons, or just want to stave off boredominduced psychosis while in quarantine, there are lots of good reasons to start a pandemic garden.

Unfortunately, lots of novice gardeners tend to tumble into the hobby headlong with little planning or research—I was no different. Then, when something goes wrong, there’s a powerful temptation to say, “I guess I just can’t keep plants alive,” and quit.

It doesn’t have to be that way. After consulting with a couple of experts—and mining my own years of experience in the “field,” so to speak— here’s what you need to know about starting your garden, and keeping it growing.

There is no such thing as a “green thumb.”

It’s easy to get discouraged when your plants get shredded by bugs, or when you dig up your potatoes and find they’re all half an inch in diameter because you planted them too close together. But it’s important not to get immediately discouraged. Many successful gardeners are actually serial failures who decided to frame their failures as learning experiences rather than evidence they suck at plant care.

“Don’t lose heart,” says Weston Miller, a faculty member for Oregon State University’s Extension Service who runs the master gardener program for the Portland metro area. “Even people who are experienced vegetable gardeners run into problems, too, because we’re at the whims of weather and pests.”

Start small and start easy.

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

Think about what you can feasibly grow in your space, what’s worth the effort for you and the rest of your household, and what can feasibly be planted right now. For instance, it’s too late to start tomatoes from seed, but late May to early June is an ideal time to get starts in the ground.

If you don’t have a lot of space, you might want to skip onions, carrots or potatoes. Fruiting plants like tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers might be out of the question if you don’t get a lot of sunlight on your garden. But lettuce, chard and collards do fine in filtered or indirect light, and so do most perennial kitchen herbs, like parsley or chives.

Miller also notes that a lot of novice gardeners

don’t research soil conditions before they get going and find their plants’ growth stunted as a result. If you’re planting directly in your backyard, get the soil tested for lead and other contaminants, and also check its pH, since Western Oregon’s soil is slightly more acidic than many food plants prefer.

If you’re planting in raised beds, use a potting mix rather than just dumping in compost, as many novice gardeners do, he says.

Do your research—and be skeptical.

There’s bad gardening information everywhere, from gimmicky Pinterest hacks to home magazines, and it sets people up to fail and blame themselves.

“Sometimes in home magazines, you see beautiful photographs of herbs [growing] in people’s kitchens. That never works,” says Maggie Stuckey, co-author of The Bountiful Container. “It makes a pretty photograph, but it never works.”

Stuckey set out to write The Bountiful Container after moving into a condo in Portland and finding no container gardening books that actually mentioned growing food. I recommend it wholeheartedly. Miller recommends Seattle Tilth’s Maritime Northwest Gardening Guide for novices in the Pacific Northwest—crucially, it lists specific vegetable varieties that thrive in this region. Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades and The New Sunset Western Garden Book is a useful at-a-glance guide to specific plants.

Also, the vegetable gardening module of OSU’s master gardener program is available for free. The program has an Ask an Expert service where you can reach out to college-certified master gardeners online and get an email response within a couple of days.

Find your plant people.

Given the veil of shame people drape over themselves any time a plant in their care dies, you would think there would be a lot of gatekeeping in the gardening community. In fact, there is way less “name three of their albums” nonsense in gardening than other subcultures.

Stuckey says a beginning gardener’s best friend is an older next-door neighbor. Failing that, join a garden club—right now, that means looking online or posting in neighborhood forums to ask if anyone is available for gardening advice or troubleshooting.

“People who love gardening are incredibly generous with their time and information,” Stuckey says. “You just have to find them, and I can’t think of a better way than social media.”

FOOD & DRINK

Editor: Matthew Singer / Contact: msinger@wweek.com

COURTESY OF LOCAL OCEAN

TAKE ME OUT

Dock in a Box A seafood restaurant in Newport is bringing the coast to valley-dwellers.

BY AN D I P R E W I T T

aprewitt@wweek.com

Working as deckhand on her father’s fishing boat during summers in high school and college put Laura Anderson through some harrowing ordeals.

She’s ridden out high swells that felt like taking a spin in a washing machine.

She helped navigate a vessel through dense fog, and didn’t panic—too much—when the steering chain on her father’s fishing boat broke, leaving them bobbing in the ocean in stormy weather.

All those experiences taught her a valuable lesson: that life on the open water wasn’t for her.

“I didn’t really find the whole ‘man in the sea’ romantic notion was really all that for me,” she says. “My dad’s boat was an older wooden boat that always had a ton of water on the floor—even in the house.”

It did, however, make her fall in love with the seafood industry. When the opportunity came to open a seafood market in Newport, Ore., with a local angler in 2005, her entrepreneurial instinct kicked in. The original plan was to operate a small eatery that would really be more of a sidekick to the store, but Local Ocean’s bay-to-plate prepared meals—particularly its tidal poolsized stews brimming with prawns, shellfish and crab—became so popular, it had to add more tables to meet demand.

One of the traits Anderson developed while chugging around the ocean all those years ago was resiliency, which is currently critical for any business owner hoping to stay buoyant during the pandemic. So while she can’t yet reopen the restaurant—which sits just steps away from the docks where commercial fishing boats are moored— Anderson has thought of other ways to put their haul to good use.

“I think it was just after we had to do our closure in mid-March and I sent everybody home,” Anderson says. “It was a lot to swallow. I took about a week off, but got really

bored and I had to get creative—look around at what we have at Local Ocean and what we haven’t lost. We lost our dining room, but we still had access to this great local seafood.”

Her solution? Develop a CSA-style fish box for customers.

It’s no secret that valley folk are desperate to visit Oregon’s beaches, after all. For now, a vicarious taste will have to do, and Local Ocean is happy to bring some salt and brine to its landlocked neighbors in the form of the Dock Box, which launched in Newport nearly two months ago and recently expanded to Portland.

“We’ve had so much request from the Willamette Valley,” Anderson says. “It really makes sense because we had so many customers from Portland and Eugene that would drive to the coast just to dine at Local Ocean. We miss them and they miss us.

Through Dock Box, we’re able to bring our dining experience to them in the safety of their home.”

Each kit comes equipped with the ingredients you’ll need—down to the tartar sauce—to put together a classic dish from the restaurant’s menu. In weeks to come, Anderson plans to add some of its rotating specials to the lineup, as well. Local Ocean drives the boxes to the B-Line warehouse at the Redd at Southeast 8th Avenue and Salmon Street every Wednesday, where customers can then have them placed in the trunk of their car between 2 and 5 pm.

Even for people who’ve started devoting hours to the art of meal prep while in lockdown—soaking beans, power baking, inventing new ways to eat pancakes by turning them into cereal—cooking seafood may still seem intimidating or unnecessarily messy, given the scales and the shells and the tiny bones.

“A lot of people are nervous to cook seafood on their own,” Anderson admits. “We know that most seafood is consumed in restaurants—probably two-thirds. So getting people to cook seafood at home has been an

DOCK O’CLOCK: Local Ocean’s Dock Box contains all the elements to re-create some of the Newport staple’s most popular dishes.

exciting challenge.”

The Dock Box tries to make it easy for the reluctant home chef—you don’t even need to wield a knife to chop vegetables or dice garnish, since Local Ocean has already done that for you. For some, that may wrest away a little too much culinary control.

But for the lazy cook, the tired cook or the frazzled cook working, parenting and homeschooling during a global health crisis, the simplicity is welcome.

“Dock Box isn’t going to go away just because our dining room reopens,” Anderson says. “I think we demonstrated that people want it, and hopefully want to continue to cook in their homes. Yes, I want them to come to the restaurant—don’t get me wrong. But I also think it’s cool that people are doing more cooking at home and sharing that experience.”

Still, I wanted to experience it for myself.

So I picked up a recent box containing all the elements for Dungeness crab cakes with fennel slaw and fries.

My only other attempt to make crab cakes at home was about 10 years ago, after a friend who spent the day nursing pots on the coast ended up with an abundance of crustaceans and I gratefully relieved him of several pounds. The first go-round resulted in an oily, flour-coated mess that produced soggy, dense pucks. After that, I figured it was best left to the experts.

Fortunately, the Dock Box version of crab cakes is nearly foolproof. The cakes come pre-assembled—the trickiest part is forming patties of lumpy meat and bread crumbs that will remain light while not

falling apart. All I had to do was coat them in panko—also provided by Local Ocean— which was the ideal breading since the airy flakes wouldn’t absorb the olive oil I used to cook the discs in a stovetop skillet.

Even though I followed the three to five minutes recommended per side, I must have had the heat on a little too high since my cakes ended up with a crust that was closer to slightly burned toast than the golden-brown hue I was aiming for. Despite my bungle, the cakes ended up with a satisfying crunch and the simple breading didn’t compete with the crab’s delicate sweetness.

The sides are even easier to whip together, provided you can unseal a Ziploc and follow basic directions. I emptied one bag of ready-to-cook fries onto a baking sheet and simply popped them into the oven for about 30 minutes, intervening only to give them a good shake about halfway through. I then took a different bag filled with chopped Napa cabbage and diced fennel and dumped that into a bowl. After tossing the veggies in the provided balsamic vinaigrette, presto—I had slaw!

To finish, I sliced the box’s lemon into wedges for a fresh drizzle of acid over the crab. It was the only time I had to pick up a knife during the entire meal prep.

ORDER: Local Ocean’s Dock Box, which includes two separate meals, can be ordered at localocean.net for pickup 2-5 pm Wednesdays at B-Line at the Redd at the corner of Southeast 8th Avenue and Salmon Street. The average price is $59 for two or $109 for four, as well as a $10 fee to cover shipping from Newport.

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

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FOOD & DRINK FEATURE

Grind One Out

HOT PLATES

Where to order takeout or delivery this week.

1. Apizza Scholls 4741 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-233-1286, apizzascholls.com.

You could consider Apizza Scholls ground zero for Portland’s rise to prominence as a pizza town. The classic among classics—the one to make sure to scratch off a bucket list of Portland dinners—is the Sausage & Mama ($26), named after the Mama Lil’s Kick Butt pickled goathorn peppers spread across the dough, along with sausage served crumble style. It is a wondrous combination.

How to order: Call the restaurant.

The coronavirus wiped out a local artist’s main source of income. So she pivoted to coffee— and dirty jokes.

BY M E IRA G E B E L

@meiragebel

Before COVID-19, Ryan McAbery was a full-time artist traveling the country to various festivals and selling her typography-style photographs.

Now, she writes coffee porn.

But the idea for Hard On Coffee, McAbery’s collaboration with Beaverton’s Thornton Family Coffee Roasters, occurred to her long before she was pushed into doing it. It only really existed in her head, but she did have a tagline: “It Gets You Up in the Morning.”

“I have an aesthetic as a creative person,” she says, “but I will make an inappropriate joke often at the wrong time.”

Reality nudged McAbery, 46, to turn that joke into an actual business. By mid-March, it was clear she couldn’t make money with art shows across the country canceled indefinitely. She threw the idea out to a friend, who encouraged her to go forward with it.

She took a week to develop the website and

branding for Hard On, relying on a private Facebook group—which included her middle-school teacher— to run “flicking the bean” jokes by before the launch.

The rooster logo is an insinuation in itself.

McAbery then partnered with Thornton to create three blends, each with their own dick-joke flair: Once You Go Dark Roast, Morning Wood, First Crack. Though it’s only been a month since Hard On sent out its first package—on April Fools’ Day— McAbery’s seen interest in the brand peak on social media, largely thanks to the adult wordplay.

McAbery knows it will take some time before she sees a profit, but she’s having fun building a business and enjoying the much-needed distraction.

“If the coffee takes off and I can make a living off it, I have no complaints,” she said. “I can still be an artist on Sunday.”

BUY IT: See hardoncoffee.com for ordering information.

SNACK REVIEW

2. Ichiza Kitchen 1628 SW Jefferson St., 503-702-8374, ichizakitchen.com.

Ichiza is a fully vegan pan-Asian restaurant, serving utterly fresh plant-based renditions of classics dishes from Korea, the Philippines, Japan and China. There are plenty of noodles if that’s your thing, but the blow-away dish is Ichiza’s Mapo Tofu, an all-day prep of steamed tofu and deep, complex, tingly chile sauce served with cooling rice and cucumbers.

How to order: See website.

3. Quaintrelle

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BUY IT: Real Good Food, 935 NE Couch St., 503987-0828, realgoodfood.com. $7.

3004 E Burnside St., 503-206-8778, gadogadopdx.com.

Like other restaurants that have abruptly pivoted to new models in the wake of the coronavirus, the co-owners of Gado Gado briefly considered selling familystyle meals that could be completed at home but decided to return to what they knew best: fragrant, fiery and ribsticking Asian American mashups, now served under the name Oma’s Takeaway.

One item is a plate of green beans and brisket, which is brined in brown sugar, salt, Shaoxing wine and water, then smoked for eight to 10 hours, and topped with a savory fried egg.

How to order: See website for pickup, or order delivery through Caviar.

5. Matt’s BBQ Tacos

TOP 5

3. Threshold Brewing and Blending

1. Ecliptic Brewing

cloves, black pepper and laurel, with dainty slices of carrot and cucumber, plus a single piri piri pepper, crammed alongside three fairly significant chunks of preserved pilchard. My wife’s review was, “Tastes like tuna but more fishy,” but it’s also pretty mellow, and more tender than oily, at least compared to anchovies. Real Good Food owner Jim Dixon recommends using them in pasta, as part of a composed grain salad, or mixed with soft cheese as a dip. But I had mine on Triscuits alongside Pennsylvanian Unique Pretzels, and the mix of spice and fat and salt and crunch was perfect.

Recommended. JASON COHEN.

4. Oma’s Takeaway (aka Gado Gado)

3207 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-956-7455, mattsbbqtacos.com.

Another outlet for Matt Vicedomini’s smoked meats—and much easier to get into your mouth right now than his regular barbecue offerings—Matt’s BBQ Tacos successfully pilfers Austin’s greatest cultural export: the breakfast taco.

Smoky-sweet proteins are crammed into a flour tortilla on a bed of fried potatoes, cheddar and scrambled eggs. Our top pick is the brisket, which is packed with the pitmaster’s trademark notes of brass and wood, with a melt-in-your-mouth texture and just the perfect amount of char on the edges.

How to order: See website.

Where to order beer for pickup or delivery this week.

Pinhais Spiced Sardines in Olive Oil

APIZZA SCHOLLS

3936 N Mississippi Ave., 503-200-5787, quaintrelle.co.

Bar manager Camille Cavan says she’s a gift-giver by nature, and her latest creation is a much-needed present to a stressed-out city: a DIY cocktail kit. The $20 boxes contain all the ingredients to make four servings of a mixed drink— with the exception of the alcohol. As for the food, the takeout menu rotates, but recent offerings have included buttermilk fried chicken, braised lamb shank and “Dope Ass Fried Rice.”

How to order: Call the restaurant or see website. Also available for delivery through Caviar and Tock.

BUZZ LIST

I’m already in the bean club, and my sourdough is fed. It seemed like a good time, then, to become a tinned-fish person. These sardines were an impulse buy from Real Good Food—my no-longersecret source for flour and rice—which imports them directly from Matosinhos, Portugal. My thinking was, since there’s no visiting a wine bar at the moment, let alone the Mediterranean, why not have a healthier, more nutritious alternative to charcuterie at home, not to mention a more ocean-friendly option than most fish? Conservas Pinhais is a 100-year-old artisanal producer that gets each morning ’s catch cleaned, cooked and canned on the same day. The sardines come spiced or not, in good-quality olive oil or tomato sauce.

The seasoning mix in the spiced sardines is salt,

M AT T W O N G

TOP 5

825 N Cook St., 503-265-8002, eclipticbrewing.com.

Prior to launching Ecliptic in 2013, John Harris was something like the Jon Brion of Portland beer—the expert craftsman behind all your favorite records who only true geeks could pick out of a lineup. Standbys like the dry and piney Starburst IPA and the refreshingly tart Carina Peach Sour have become staples in their own right, while the rest of the menu is filled out by a rotating slate of seasonals and special releases.

2. Ancestry Brewing 4334 SE Hawthorne Blvd., 503-7649574, ancestrybrewing.com.

Ancestry Brewing dropped anchor in a beer desert three years ago, and has been throwing out life preservers to parched neighborhoods ever since—most recently, the far reaches of Southeast Hawthorne. Although Ancestry has been connecting a good portion of its taps to well-executed, less-trendy styles, including an awardwinning Irish red, the IPAs are the standouts. The hazy Aussie bobs ebulliently between bitterness and gushes of mango fruit, while Ancestry IPA is pine forward.

403 SE 79th Ave., 503-477-8789, threshold.beer.

After brewing at home since 2010, Jarek Szymanski and David Fuller decided to take the plunge and go pro, and in early 2019 Threshold celebrated a year of operation. Szymanski and Fuller have done a nice job generating an eclectic list of pleasing beers, including Grandma’s Loaded, a boozy imperial stout brewed for the 2019 Holiday Ale Festival.

4. West Coast Grocery 1403 SE Stark St., 503-477-6011, westcoastgrocerycompany.com.

The fifth generation’s West Coast Grocery sells no produce, but owner Charlie Hyde’s ancestors would be proud of the current agricultural products. The cozy corner bar across from Revolution Hall makes one of the finest cream ales in town, and its hoppy beers are quietly rising in the ranks as well. Pay a visit to the beer window, open 2-7 pm daily.

5. Sasquatch Brewing 2531 NW 30th Ave., 503-841-5687; 6440 SW Capitol Highway, 503-4021999; sasquatchbrewery.com.

Sasquatch’s sense of whimsy is apparent the moment you walk into its taproom: camping lanterns on its tables, string lights lining the ceiling’s wood beams, and a giant mural depicting a Pacific Northwest landscape in which a raccoon fills a barrel of beer. The sweet, Czech Pilsner Don’t Stop Me Now has notes of toasted wheat, and the Woodboy, a piney Northwest-style IPA, is as fresh and aromatic as an old-growth forest.

C O U R T E S Y O F E L E VAT I O N I S T S . O R G

POTLANDER

Screen Saviors

Missing group smoke sessions? Here are five ways to replicate the experience online.

ELEVATIONISTS.ORG

BY BRIA N N A W H E E L E R

Herb is the great equalizer. It can bring people from all walks of life together with one pass of the pipe.

There’s a lot of trust that comes with sharing a joint with a stranger, and it’s an experience more than a few of us are missing. But if shelter in place has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t keep an extrovert down, especially when powered by weed. A growing number of online hangouts and virtual smoke sessions, while not quite effective in replacing the moist dew of another person’s saliva on a freshly rolled spliff, can quench the desire to connect with other smokers in a social setting.

Sure, FaceTime smoke circles with the homies are a welcome respite from solo medicating. But if you’re missing the novelty of meeting new BFFs through the magic of weed, these free virtual mixers are the next best thing.

For the Spiritual Stoner: Elevationist.org Sunday Service Technically, the nondenominational International Church of Cannabis—or Elevationist Movement—claims “no divine authority, nor authoritarian structure,” making it less of a religious institution and more of a spiritually stoned virtual community center. The church is headquartered in Denver but offers its international congregation Sunday services that celebrate the sacred herb in a way that feels uncannily like smoking with the homies.

Strain suggestion: Lambs Bread is a giggly, euphoric strain which, despite a sparkling body high, is calm and crystallized in the head.

GO: Elevationists.org or facebook.com/elevationists.

For the Advocacy-Minded Stoner: Oregon Cannabis Association Smoke Sesh

For the Entrepreneurial Womxn of Cannabis: Women Grow Socials

The Oregon Cannabis Association’s interactive online events often concern cannabis business and advocacy, but they also encourage community and connection for the stoned and alone. Membership is not required, only a social media follow, though links to the Smoke Sesh are private and must be requested. Oregon Cannabis Association’s events, virtual or otherwise, always find a way to make inclusivity feel exclusive.

In lieu of the in-person support typically provided by business incubator Women Grow, the organization offers live seminars, networking events, and yes, happy-hour and after-hours socials. Cannabis lifestyle enthusiasts and business mavens alike who are feeling rudderless without their stalwart communities are encouraged to join in.

Strain suggestion: Pineapple is a distinctly peppy strain, with an effervescent body high that’ll justify an abundance of Zoom gesticulations.

Strain suggestion: Space Queen’s lineage—Cinderella 99 and Romulan—is a formula for empowerment. The physical high is bold and low-key arousing, and the head high is a soothing mist of anti-anxiety panacea.

GO: Instagram.com/womengrow.

GO: Instagram.com/oregoncannabisassociation.

For the Normcore Canna-Crew: Puff Paint Pass Virtual Art Classes For those who miss structured activities with their stoner crew, Puff Pass and Paint offers virtual classes so you can still link up with your pals and engage in some tangible creativity, with a high probability of pothead hilarity. Each lesson is free and changes daily.

Strain suggestion: Bubble Gum’s soft blend of blissful, bouncy creativity, and lowered inhibitions line up well with a painting class made for stoners.

GO: Instagram.com/puffpassandpaint for updated class info.

For the Stoner Feminista: Tokeativity Happy Hours Tokeativity has also pivoted its programming online, hosting story hours, homeschooling support, sexual health seminars and more. The international group is made up of several chapters, and the switch to cyberspace has made each chapter’s local events available to its international group of members. Have a medicated brunch with likeminded femmes in South Africa, or relax into some deeply stoned yoga with the Chicago chapter, or attend a virtual canna-cocktail party in Las Vegas—or, since we’re all at home anyway, all of the above. Many events are free, some are offered on a sliding scale.

For an equal opportunity high: Shangri La is another perky strain with a zippy body high gently tempered by a soothing, relaxed head high—perfect for meeting new friends.

GO: Instagram.com/tokeativity.

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PERFORMANCE

BOOKS

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

FEATURE

Written by: Scout Brobst / Contact: sbrobst@wweek.com

My Essential Seven:

FIVE HORROR NOVELS YOU SHOULD BE READING RIGHT NOW

Bobby Bermea

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix

The co-founder of the Beirut Wedding World Theater Project has deities, superheroes and Utah on his mind.

Grady Hendrix doesn’t just write for horror fans— he writes for the masses and, in the case of his latest book, readers who finds themselves charmed by both Southern drawls and the 1990s. The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is equal parts gore show and social commentary, planting a handsome vampire on the gauzy back porches of Charleston, N.C., and making sure he’s the least of the monsters. It’s a quarantine read that won’t make you think deep thoughts about the world—just possibly the cult mentality of book groups.

BY BE N N E T T C A M P B E L L FE RGUS O N

Talking to Bobby Bermea is like buying a plane ticket, only to suddenly find yourself on a rocket bound for Pluto. He’ll discuss his work as an actor and a co-founder of the Beirut Wedding World Theater Project, which he started with his partner, Jamie M. Rea, but he takes you on enthralling journeys to other realms. If you want to hear about God, romance or the stars, he’s your guy.

That makes him the perfect person to chat with during a pandemic. Bermea’s stories of his adventurous life—as a self-described “Air Force brat,” he spent his childhood everywhere from New Jersey to the Azores—have a worldexpanding allure, and the coronavirus hasn’t diminished his defiant optimism.

“Art is like a river,” he says. “You dam it up in one place, it’s just going to go in a different direction.”

Bermea’s resilience shined as he spoke to WW about the people, places and objects that have helped define him.

What he offered was both a list and an index of his artistic and spiritual influences.

1. Moab, Utah

“Moab—that whole area, Arches National Park, Canyonlands—is incredible. I remember I found a little place that looked like a seat and I sat there and the stars came out. For me, that was the closest I felt like I ever came to seeing the face of God.”

2. Beirut Wedding

“Years and years and years ago, I saw a picture of a man and a woman who had just gotten married. The man was still in his tuxedo, the woman was still in her wedding dress, and they were walking through the bombed-out streets of Beirut, Lebanon. The caption underneath said that the man was Muslim and the woman was Christian.

I remember looking at that picture and thinking, ‘Man, whatever my art says, I would like it to say something like what the picture is telling me right now.’”

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Stephen King

BOBBY BERMEA

6. Buddha of Compassion

“I own this little wooden sculpture of the Buddha, and he’s sitting down cross-legged and he’s bent over and his face is in his hands.

Maybe like 16 years ago, 18 years ago, I was doing a show in Ohio and we went over to this dude’s house. That statue was sitting on his table and it struck me immediately. That guy told me that the statue was the Buddha of Compassion, and I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ and he said, ‘The Buddha is taking all the suffering of the world onto himself.’ He was like, ‘Take it. This obviously speaks to you, and I think it’s supposed to be with you.’”

3. My comic book collection

“There were times when I was 12 and going into middle school and that guy was, like, my only friend. I would just go into my bedroom for hours, and it would be just me and Prince. Just the other day, I was listening to some of those old albums—Controversy and Dirty Mind—that I hadn’t listened to in years. It’s funny—if you asked me, I couldn’t tell you any of the lyrics, but when they’re playing, I know them all. I know every grunt and every scream.”

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

Reading The Hole is a bit like watching invasive surgery in real time, except the doctors should have their credentials revoked and the patient is somehow awake. A bestseller in Korea, Hye-young Pyun’s novel follows the story of a man who regains consciousness after a car accident that kills his wife and leaves him disfigured, paralyzed, and in the care of his despondent mother-in-law. The Hole taps into the unique horror of neglect and isolation, as well what it means to be human and vulnerable. In other words, it’s horror groomed for the pandemic age.

Kingsley Amis isn’t a traditional horror writer. Maybe that’s why he can sketch out such a good ghost story.

Too funny to be queasy, too chilling to be forgettable, The Green Man isn’t sure if it wants you to root for its lead, a middle-aged man in pastoral England who seems much too fussy and bumbling to attract a spirit from the other side. But you do, sort of, when the ghost is referred to as a “minor threat to security” and our protagonist falls victim to his own neuroses.

The book soars in its punchy dialogue, figuring Amis as something of a slapstick Shirley Jackson.

4. My family

5. Prince

The Hole, Hye-young Pyun

The Green Man, Kingsley Amis

“I think my first comic book was Avengers No. 102. My dad got sent on an isolated assignment to Thailand and we couldn’t go, so me and my mom and my sister went on a bus trip, and my mom bought me a bunch of comic books. Mainly, I collect Silver and Bronze Age Marvel. Those comics helped define the parameters of my imagination in a lot of ways—what was possible, what I was excited by.”

“The person I’m with right now is my partner, Jamie. We’ve been each other’s family for 20 years, off and on. It’s never been a straight line, but she knows me better than anybody else. She’s my favorite person. There are certain things about she and I that only the two of us understand.”

It’ll take more than a pandemic to stop Stephen King from publishing another novel. His latest, If It Bleeds, wades deep into the world of techno-pessimism and shady reporting, but an older, wildly underrated classic is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. A young girl finds herself separated from her family on a hike of the Appalachian Trail, left with only Twinkies, a tuna sandwich and a Walkman for survival and sanity.

The reader is never quite sure how alone she is, with feverish visions of hulking, ugly beasts set to the sounds of Red Sox games. It’s King at his best, delivering smart, understated horror that crafts suspense out of a single character and her own psyche.

7. Painting of a man and elephant with child inside

“It’s this giant painting that I have in my dining room. A man is standing next to an elephant that has a human child inside of its stomach. This painting was given to me by [my former roommate] in lieu of his phone bill. I want to say that guy’s phone bill was, like, $85 and he could have given me the money and it would just be gone now, in the wind. But he gave me that painting and, 20-plus years later, I still have it.”

The Rim of Morning, William Sloane William Sloane’s The Rim of Morning is two books in one—To Walk the Night and The Edge of Running Water—each playing to Sloane’s signature style of cosmic horror and doling out genre-bending goodness. In the two books, experiments go awry, death is mistaken for life, and scientists inexplicably go missing. The best way to approach Sloane’s writing is to go in blind and fall down the rabbit hole he has burrowed for you. One character says it all: “The first sight of it nearly stopped the heart in my chest.”

MOVIES

SCREENER

COURTESY OF ESCAPINGFREEDOM.NET

GET YOUR REP S IN

Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com

C O U R T E S Y O F C J E N T E R TA I N M E N T

While the local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. Since May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, this week’s theme highlights the phenomenal cinematic contributions from Asian filmmakers and actors.

TAKE ME TO CHURCH: A brother and sister attempt to reconcile in Escaping Freedom.

Lady Vengeance (2005) The third installment of Park Chan-wook’s Vengeance Trilogy, following the famed Oldboy (2003), centers on a woman sent to prison for a murder she did not commit. After she’s released 13 years later, she enacts an elaborate plan for revenge against the true killer. Gruesome, stylish and deeply satisfying. Amazon Prime, Kanopy, Tubi.

Shoplifters (2018) A group of unrelated Tokyoites living in poverty resort to shoplifting to make ends meet, but their lifestyle unravels after encountering, and unofficially adopting, an abused young girl. Winner of the Palme d’Or, this elegiac drama from Hirokazu Kore-eda is a stirring meditation on what makes a family. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, Vudu, YouTube.

Irma Vep (1996) The great Maggie Cheung plays herself in Olivier Assayas’ meta-drama, which follows the Chinese star as she remakes the classic silent serial movie Les Vampires. It’s a fascinating look at the process of French filmmaking, as well as a moving probe into the alienated perspective of a Hong Kong native in Paris. Criterion Channel.

Burning (2018) In Lee Chang-dong’s adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning,” a young man gets tangled up in a mystery after the girl he likes returns from a trip with a handsome stranger (Steven Yeun), then subsequently disappears. Laden with well-crafted ambiguity and unforgettable cinematography. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Netflix, YouTube.

Mother (2009) When her intellectually disabled son is framed for a murder he did not commit, a devoted mother becomes determined to prove his innocence. Not to be confused with Mother! (2017), this crime thriller is arguably Mother Superior, as it’s directed by multi-Academy Award winner Bong Joon-ho. Amazon Prime, Hulu, Sling TV, Vudu.

Open Confession

A new locally produced film centers on a pastor struggling with self-deceit that mirrors the director’s past.

BY C H ANC E SOLEM-PFEIFER

@chance_s_p

When Edd Blott recalls himself on the set of his sophomore feature, Escaping Freedom, the director has retreated to a private corner. His eyes are closed as ambient music floods through his earbuds. Such solitude is fitting for the meditative drama about a Portland pastor reckoning with his sexuality.

Blott’s cast, though, is more likely to remember him as part craftsman, part apparition. “Floating ” is how actor and producer Patrick D. Green describes the director’s presence while shooting the movie’s many wordless scenes. All the while, that omnipresent earbud set the invisible tempo for how languidly the film would unfold.

“He just moves around you; it’s bizarre,” Green says. “For an actor, it’s the best possible circumstance for your director to call action and have you run entire scenes. You can live the life of your character and just be there. That’s my favorite thing about Edd on set—the earbud in his ear the whole time, and so focused on shooting.”

Those two images of Blott pretty much synthesize the atmosphere of the completed Escaping Freedom, available now via Amazon Prime and Vimeo.

The two-sided confessional undulates between lonely stillness and an almost suspended physicality of characters running, screaming or making love.

Plotwise, the evolution of the pastor, Vincent (Green), is spurred by his estranged sister, Krystal (Kelly Godell), who appears one fateful night, passed out across one of his pews. But even as their

verbal throwdowns about the other’s self-deceit partly define the story, Escaping Freedom mostly eludes explicit social commentary. It’s an intensely private film, and we understand Vincent and Krystal’s struggles around sex and abuse through narrated self-talk or hypnotic cutaways to Seaside, Ore., rather than polemic speeches about identity.

“We weren’t talking about [the film] in acts or scenes,” Blott says. “It was always in movements and musical terms.”

“WE WEREN’T TALKING ABOUT THE FILM IN ACTS OR SCENES. IT WAS ALWAYS IN MOVEMENTS OR MUSICAL TERMS.” —EDD BLOT T

Blott himself was raised in Spokane, Wash., in a conservative Christian environment, working in and around churches throughout his 20s before coming out. Paradoxically, then, his film is both intimately familiar and uneasy in the confines of church. With Rose City Park United Methodist on Northeast Alameda Street as the shooting location, Green performs Vincent’s duties of counseling, sermon adaptation and clerical busywork with an almost forcible calm. “[Playing Vincent,] I always felt this holding of my breath,” Green says. “He knows he can’t move quickly or speak quickly because he’s afraid of betraying

himself. I think we have this stereotype that pastors are inhuman or above human and don’t have flaws. It actually made me very sympathetic toward people who do that work.”

And while Escaping Freedom doesn’t hold glaring political ire toward Christianity, it demonstrates how religious doctrine can deny people—both fictional and real—meaningful self-acceptance.

“So much of Christianity is about your total depravity—how everything about you is wicked and evil without Christ,” Blott says. “And that just messes with you.

So much of my past has been about not listening to myself.”

As in Blott’s own life, a flood of inspiration and change indeed arrives for Vincent, yet the film resists reducing coming out to oneself or a loved one to a single act. In fact, Blott says the thematic content of his movie will be news to many of his friends and family. Still, he’s optimistic, even thankful, for the conversations to come.

“I certainly feel nervous, but my family is filled with wonderful people,” Blott says. “Although we disagree about many of the essentials, I will still be loved by them. I’m not blind to the fact that this is not common for many, especially those who come out as non-heterosexual and/ or agnostic in a family so deeply involved in a conservative church. I don’t see myself as being ‘brave’ per se, but I do see myself as having a platform here that so many people aren’t afforded. I can’t ignore that.”

SEE IT: Escaping Freedom streams on Amazon Prime and Vimeo.

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May 13-19 KI JIN KIM

MOVIES OUR KEY

: T H I S M O V I E I S E XC E L L E N T, O N E O F T H E B E S T O F T H E Y E A R. : T H I S M O V I E I S G O O D. W E R E C O M M E N D YO U WATC H I T. : T H I S M O V I E I S E N T E R TA I N I N G B U T F L AW E D. : T H I S M O V I E I S A P I E C E O F S H I T.

TOP PICK OF THE WEEK

Driveways Gentle and touching, the second feature from Korean American director Andrew Ahn is a warm embrace of a movie when we need it most.

This low-key drama works as an examination of how small acts of kindness can result in great rewards, and provides a coda to Brian Dennehy’s rich career following the actor’s death last month. He plays Del, a Korean War veteran and widower perfectly content to spend his final days on the front porch watching shadows dance on his driveway as life passes by, until a single mother, Kathy (Hong Chau), and her 8-year-old son, Cody (Lucas Jaye), arrive next door. Kathy is there to clean out her dead sister’s home and get it ready to place on the market. That leads her son to form an unlikely yet touching bond with the old man, since he desperately needs both a friend and father figure. While mismatched buddies are a common trope in indie pictures, Driveways gives Cody and Del texture, and the actors flesh out their roles with stellar subdued depictions. “I wish I took the time to take a good look at stuff,” Del explains in a tear-jerking monologue in which he shares life advice with the boy. He’s talking about relishing what’s in front of you before it’s gone, a kernel of wisdom for those watching Dennehy’s final, deeply moving performance. NR. ASHER LUBERTO. Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube.

ALSO PLAYING Bad Education Midway through this school embezzlement saga based on a true story, Cory Finley’s sophomore film (following 2018’s Thoroughbreds) breaks out its version of a Goodfellas montage. Elvis Presley croons “Blue Christmas,” but in lieu of cocaine packing, we see PTA baskets stuffed.

And instead of cash counting, a PowerPoint presentation shows off early-decision college acceptance rates. It’s a dash ironic, but the HBO original is critically revealing how corruption can guzzle accomplishment as its fuel. Embodying that consumption is charismatic superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman), who strives to keep his Long Island school district’s reputation gleaming despite a brewing scandal. Backed by Allison Janney and Ray Romano, Jackman inhabits his best mode here: a gifted ringleader with a dry rot problem.

Every lie is wrapped in an ideal, and it takes the full film to figure out which came first: the ideal or the lie. And while there’s not a gun, narcotic or punch in the entire film, Bad Education is a crime movie with guts.

After all, it’s easy to critique conspicuously wealthy South Shore hypocrites, but connecting those trappings to more widely accepted American aspirations—blue-ribbon public schools and the high-achieving students they produce—well, that’s a far more bitter pill. There hasn’t been a smarter streaming original this quarantine season. TV-MA. CHANCE SOLEMPFEIFER. Amazon Prime, HBO.

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Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution The opening moments of the new documentary Crip Camp are immediately heartwarming: We see kids with disabilities jumping and rolling with joy as Richie Havens’ iconic ad lib Woodstock anthem “Freedom” plays in the background.

Before the title card even appears, you’re already inspired by Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht’s archival-footage film. The origin story of the disability rights movement in the 1970s has largely gone untold until now: It all began with Camp Jened, a summer getaway in the Catskills for disabled youth, who were encouraged to use the time to explore their interests and identities.

Co-director Lebrecht was a camper at Jened, and intentionally uses the term “crip” in the title as a way of reclaiming the slur. The camp was also a place where teens and young adults could simply let their guard down: They played baseball, pranked each other, smoked pot with the counselors, and sometimes even had sex. But before long, the filmmakers expand their narrative arc by illustrating how youths were empowered by their experiences there, particularly Judy Heumann, a former camper who went on to become a disability rights activist and helped pass the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The ultimate message is, revolution can start with the young, which aligns perfectly with the opening song’s theme of liberation. R. ASHER LUBERTO. Netflix.

Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

DRIVEWAYS

Arkansas If you know Clark Duke only as the bespectacled fourth wheel of the Hot Tub Time Machine movies, you might not assume he has a Southern noir in his bag, much less one with the crime-movie literacy of Donnie Brasco and a Flaming Lips soundtrack. Duke’s directorial debut, a Lionsgate release redirected to VOD this month, fields a stacked cast of Arkansas drug runners: Liam Hemsworth and Duke as our two flunky protagonists, and Vince Vaughn, John Malkovich, Vivica A. Fox and Michael K. Williams as compelling higher-ups. And what this adaptation of John Brandon’s 2009 novel lacks in production value—shot with the overly digital flimsiness of so many streaming originals—it more than makes up for with well-tuned dialogue and acting that embraces a Southern gentility right up until it’s bashing those good manners over the head. Replacing the near-gothic seriousness of a True Detective is the looney banality of drug-smuggler movie nights, sweaty man buns, fireworks emporiums and Vince Vaughn spending probably half the movie’s budget on flamboyant Western button-downs.

Despite an epic structure that jumps through time, Arkansas remains light on its feet and successfully normalizes criminal life by presenting the same unreliable co-workers, thankless chores and finite shelf lives of any other profession.

R. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Amazon Prime, iTunes, On Demand.

Deerskin The latest from French DJ-turneddirector Quentin Dupieux begins with a man shelling out 8,000 euros for a used deerskin jacket. The fringe-fronted coat doesn’t really even fit Georges (Jean Dujardin, Oscar winner from The Artist), but he’s obsessed nonetheless. What follows belongs to a very specific subgenre: Cherished object takes hold of its owner. Think Lars and the Real Girl with Ryan Gosling or William Goldman’s Magic. While those titles are set in something like our reality, Deerskin follows a man trying to rid a remote French mountain town of all its other jackets.

In the process, Georges begins accidentally making a DIY art film with a local barkeep (Adèle Haenel of Portrait of a Lady on Fire). Given that ridiculousness, the tone is a small miracle.

Dujardin keeps Georges innocent, almost paternally daffy, as he shuffles toward

madness, trying to goad strangers into discussing his new David Crosby-esque duds. Granted, Deerskin at some point simply runs out of ideas or tricks (or both) and shrugs into its destiny as a 75-minute curio. But that’s not the worst sin for a bit of absurd diversion. Two of France’s biggest stars sell the material for, let’s say, 7,950 euros more than it’s worth. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. Greenwich Entertainment at Home: Kiggins, Liberty.

Vanilla I’m typically wary of any indie romantic comedy that has “quirky” in the synopsis, but Vanilla writer, director and star Will Dennis manages to infuse the film with enough self-awareness and charm to keep the eye-rolling at bay. The story centers on Elliot (Dennis), a wellmeaning elder millennial whose trust fund keeps him aimless; Kimmie (Kelsea Bauman-Murphy), a free-spirited (and, dare I say, quirky) would-be comedian; and the New York City-to-New Orleans road trip they suddenly find themselves on together. A large part of the film’s success lies in Dennis’ skewering of Elliot’s false wokeness, whether via his square reaction to sex work or the use of that golden emblem of pseudo-hip guys around the globe: a copy of David Foster Wallace’s magnum opus, Infinite Jest.

Bauman-Murphy possesses a magnetic screen presence and affability on par with the Broad City crew, making her the perfect vehicle for the audience to share “man dudes are stupid” laughs with. Like any good road movie, Vanilla features a fair amount of philosophical discussion— the philosophy here being white, cis men are often cluelessly presumptive, selfishly unaware and, well, vanilla. Wisely presenting a story about communication between the sexes from the perspective of Kimmie, Vanilla is among the rare romcoms that smartly dissects our evolving ideas of gender roles. NR. DONOVAN FARLEY. On Demand.

Butt Boy With an unruly midnight movie setting unavailable, the time seems ripe for demented schlock at home—like, say, a half-spoof about a serial killer addicted to sticking objects up his butt.

Just by themselves, the title and premise of Tyler Cornack’s Butt Boy earn your double take. Cornack co-stars as Chip, an IT guy anesthetized by the drudg-

ery of work and family until a prostate exam stirs something deep within (one guess where). Chip’s descent into anal fixation is committed and hilarious, but parody isn’t the larger aim here.

No, Butt Boy aspires to be a straight cat-and-mouse thriller—with Tyler Rice as a dogged, alcoholic detective—that belies the absurd comedic hysteria of the setup. That (perhaps noble) genre aspiration runs the film up against a litany of banal low-budget problems, unbecoming of the insanity you want from a movie called Butt Boy: shaky dramatic acting, unnecessary night driving and a POV imbalance that handicaps suspense. (Nobody wants a Mindhunter episode that’s 65 percent BTK interludes.) The execution of Butt Boy is a little like holding court with a one-of-akind dirty joke but pausing constantly to insist it’s not a joke. The punchline may still kill, but the approach is a little up its own ass. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

The Sound of the Wind While increased mental health awareness is an unequivocal positive for society, the jury is still out on how it impacts our movies. After all, if cumulative awareness equaled improved storytelling, Deadpool 2 would be the best movie ever made. On paper, The Sound of the Wind knows what it’s up to, mounting a stock thriller premise: Man finds a bag of money, believes he’s pursued by its shadowy owners, skips town; but is this all in his head? Only that last question isn’t a question. Writerdirector Jared Douglas tamps down all the thriller possibilities. Instead, we infer from the jump that the bag’s finder, Lucio (Christian Gnecco Quintero), is suffering from paranoid delusions. On the one hand, that’s a socially responsible choice. On the other, we’re then stuck for 80 minutes watching an unwell man willfully misinterpret gestures from strangers and loved ones that aren’t enough to convince the audience of any conspiracy. No one would doubt the effort here. Douglas is clearly stretching the film’s last dime, tumbling into harrowing reaches of California mountains and desert, and Gnecco Quintero gives as committed a performance of pure agony as you’ll ever see. It’s just…committed to what? He’s a vessel for unambiguous pain, not a character. NR. CHANCE SOLEM-PFEIFER. On Demand.

FLASHBACK

E X AC TLY 1 9 Y E A R S AG O, I N WI LL A M E T TE WE E K . . .

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Spotlight

RACHEL’S PERFECT PANDEMIC PLAYLIST My pandemic playlist is very deathy for a playlist that includes no death metal.

Listen along and feel my rage, my despair and just a glimmer of hope:

by Rachel Saslow

1. “Last Resort” by Papa Roach, for when you want to scream and snarl, “I can’t go on living this way/Nothing’s alright”.

2. “The Space Between” by the Dave Matthews Band, in honor of the 6-foot rule.

3. “Never Tear Us Apart” by Bishop Briggs, the anti- 6-foot rule track.

4. “Manhattan” by Cat Power for the U.S. epicenter.

“The hotel above and the street below/people come and people go/ All the friends the we used to know/ain’t coming back.”

5. “Alone Together” by Fall Out Boy. 6. “Work Song” by Hozier. “When my time comes around/lay me gently in the cold dark earth”.

7. “When Am I Gonna Lose You” by the Local Natives.

8. “When Will My Life Begin” by Mandy Moore from the movie Tangled, the Rapunzel story. Her typical day in the tower is pretty similar to lockdown— she reads every book on the shelf, bakes, stretches, bakes again, talks to her pets, paints and knits. “Stuck in the same place I’ve always been/And I’ll keep wonderin’ and wonderin’ and wonderin’ and wonderin’/When will my life begin?”

9. “Underdog” by Alicia Keys, the anthem and prayer for this moment since she sang it in a T-shirt and top-bun in her living room for the iHeart concert on TV. 10. “Out of the Woods” by Taylor Swift.

!

10 playlist r own Top u o y re a h S EEK.COM ART@WW

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Willamette Week MAY 13, 2020 wweek.com

JONESIN’

Week of MAY 13

©2020 Rob Brezsny

by Matt Jones

"Off the Rack" - if you're playing Scrabble, they work.

ARIES (March 21-April 19)

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

During a pandemic, is it possible to spread the news about your talents and offerings? Yes! That's why I suggest you make sure that everyone who should know about you does indeed know about you. To mobilize your efforts and stimulate your imagination, I came up with colorful titles for you to use to describe yourself on your résumé or in promotional materials or during conversations with potential helpers. 1.

Fire-Maker 2. Seed-Sower 3. Brisk Instigator 4. Hope Fiend 5. Gap Leaper 6. Fertility Aficionado 7. Gleam Finder 8. Launch Catalyst 9. Chief Improviser 10.

Change Artist

"I’m curious about everything, except what people have to say about me," says actor Sarah Jessica Parker. I think that's an excellent strategy for you to adopt in the coming weeks. On the one hand, the whole world will be exceptionally interesting, and your ability to learn valuable lessons and acquire useful information will be at peak. On the other hand, one of the keys to getting the most out of the wealth of catalytic influences will be to cultivate nonchalance about people's opinions of you.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

On the kids' TV show Sesame Street, there's a muppet character named Count von Count. He's a friendly vampire who loves to count things. He is 6,523,730 years old and his favorite number is 34,969—the square root of 187. The Count was "born" on November 13, 1972, when he made his first appearance on the show, which means he's a Scorpio.

I propose we make him your patron saint for the next four weeks. It's an excellent time to transform any threatening qualities you might seem to have into harmless and cordial forms of expression. It's also a favorable phase for you to count your blessings and make plans that will contribute to your longevity.

Of all the signs, Tauruses are among the least likely to be egomaniacs. Most of you aren't inclined to indulge in fits of braggadocio or outbreaks of narcissism. (I just heard one of my favorite virtuoso Taurus singers say she wasn't a very good singer!) That's why one of my secret agendas is to tell you how gorgeous you are, to nudge you to cultivate the confidence and pride you deserve to have. Are you ready to leap to a higher octave of self-love? I think so. In the coming weeks, please use Taurus artist Salvador Dali's boast as your motto: "There comes a moment in every person's life when they realize they adore me."

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

Across 1 Garbage-carrying boat 5 Singer Dylan 8 Catcher Yogi 13 Two-door car 14 "Who Do You Think You ___?" (genealogy-based series) 15 "Late Night with Seth Meyers" writer Ruffin 16 Gets a bluegrass instrumentalist (off the J)?

19 Joined up on Zoom, e.g.

20 "What ___ I thinking?"

21 Spill the ___ (gossip) 22 3-D exam 23 "Ratatouille" rat and namesakes 25 Mrs. Garrett on "The Facts of Life" 29 Relics for mom's sister (off the Q)?

32 "Tour" grp.

33 "Addams Family" cousin 34 Debonair 35 They're pointed out on an airplane

55 Wine cocktail for someone who puts lines on the road (off the Z)?

26 One with a home in both Nome and Rome, perhaps

61 By themselves

28 Enzyme suffix

62 Playing card with a letter

27 Neighbor of Ore. 30 Got ready to take off

63 Step in a game of hangman

31 "black-" or "mixed-" follower, on TV

64 Jacques Cousteau's realm

36 Bride's reply

65 ___ boom bah

37 Compilations on cassettes

66 It might get you an answer

38 Become visible

Down 1 Recover from a pub crawl, say 2 Like innovative technology 3 Greek wedding exclamation 4 Chinese sculptor and activist Ai ___ 5 Some band members 6 Heavenly sphere 7 Down at the final buzzer 8 ___ California (Mexican state)

39 Happy moments 40 Zero, on the pitch 41 "Mm-hmmm" 43 Subject at the beginning of Lizzo's "Truth Hurts" 45 Scruff of the neck 46 Hindu precepts

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22) Author Anne Lamott has some crucial advice for you to heed in the coming weeks. "Even when we’re most sure that love can’t conquer all," she says, "it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts.

It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds." I hope you'll wield this truth as your secret magic in the coming weeks, Leo. Regard love not just as a sweet emotion that makes you feel good, but as a superpower that can accomplish practical miracles.

52 "___ for takeout" (sign in some restaurants) 55 ___ Luis (Brazilian seaport) 56 "No Scrubs" R&B trio 57 Fish eggs 58 Get ___ groove

39 Detached

10 MLB stat

41 Shar-pei shout

11 In medias ___

60 You, to Caesar (found in GRATUITY)

42 ___ Soundsystem

12 Gallery stuff

44 Warning at an all-bird nude beach (off the X)?

13 "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" character?

51 "I Ching" concept 52 Be choosy 53 Contented sound 54 Ending with Wisconsin

17 "Anything you want!"

18 Hornet home 24 Back muscle, for short 25 Bumper sticker symbol depicted in yellow on a blue background

©2020 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com) For answers to this puzzle, call: 1-900-226-2800, 99 cents per minute. Must be 18+. Or to bill to your credit card, call: 1-800-655-6548. Reference puzzle #JNZ988.

"You have two ways to live your life, from memory or from inspiration," writes teacher Joe Vitale. Many of you Cancerians favor memory over inspiration to provide their primary motivation. That's not necessarily a bad thing, although it can be a problem if you become so obsessed with memory that you distract yourself from creating new developments in your life story. But in accordance with astrological potentials and the exigencies of our Global Healing Crisis, I urge you, in the coming weeks, to mobilize yourself through a balance of memory and inspiration.

I suspect you'll be getting rich opportunities to both rework the past and dream up a future full of interesting novelty. In fact, those two imperatives will serve each other well.

48 Attendees

37 Taj ___

50 "Mansfield Park" novelist

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

47 In the heavens

9 Guitar-heavy alt-rock genre

49 Winter transport

When I was young, I had a fun-filled fling with a smart Gemini woman who years later became a highly praised author and the authorized biographer of a Nobel Prizewinning writer. Do I regret our break-up? Am I sorry I never got to enjoy her remarkable success up close?

No. As amazing as she was and is, we wouldn't have been right for each other long-term. I am content with the brief magic we created together, and have always kept her in my fond thoughts with gratitude and the wish for her to thrive. Now I invite you to do something comparable to what I just did, Gemini: Make peace with your past. Send blessings to the people who helped make you who you are. Celebrate what has actually happened in your life, and graduate forever from what might have happened but didn't.

59 Geol. or chem.

last week’s answers

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Theologian St. Catherine of Siena observed, "To a brave person, good and bad luck are like her left and right hand. She uses both." The funny thing is, Virgo, that in the past you have sometimes been more adept and proactive in using your bad luck, and less skillful at capitalizing on your good luck. But from what I can tell, this curious problem has been diminishing for you in 2020—and will continue to do so. I expect that in the coming weeks, you will welcome and harness your good luck with brisk artistry.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21) "No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool," writes novelist Erica Jong. "Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great," says singer Cher. "He dares to be a fool, and that is the first step in the direction of wisdom," declared art critic James Huneker. "Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced," observed philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. According to my analysis of astrological omens, you're primed to prove these theories, Sagittarius. Congratulations!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19) "Few people have a treasure," writes Nobel Prizewinning author Alice Munro. She's speaking metaphorically, of course—not referring to a strongbox full of gold and jewels. But I'm happy to inform you that if you don't have a treasure, the coming months will be a favorable time to find or create it. So I'm putting you on a High Alert for Treasure. I urge you to be receptive to and hungry for it. And if you are one of those rare lucky ones who already has a treasure, I'm happy to say that you now have the power and motivation to appreciate it even more and learn how to make even better use of it.

Whether you do or don't yet have the treasure, heed these further words from Alice Munro: "You must hang onto it. You must not let yourself be waylaid, and have it taken from you."

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18) At this moment, there are 50 trillion cells in your body, and each of them is a sentient being in its own right.

They act together as a community, consecrating you with their astonishing collaboration. It's like magic!

Here's an amazing fact: Just as you communicate with dogs and cats and other animals, you can engage in dialogs with your cells. The coming weeks will be a ripe time to explore this phenomenon. Is there anything you'd like to say to the tiny creatures living in your stomach or lungs? Any information you'd love to receive from your heart or your sex organs?

If you have trouble believing this is a real possibility, imagine and pretend. And have fun!

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20) "A myriad of modest delights constitute happiness," wrote poet Charles Baudelaire. I think that definition will serve you well in the coming weeks, Pisces.

According to my analysis of the astrological omens, there won't be spectacular breakthroughs barging into your life; I expect no sublime epiphanies or radiant transformations. On the other hand, there'll be a steady stream of small marvels if you're receptive to such a possibility. Here's key advice: Don't miss the small wonders because you're expecting and wishing for bigger splashes.

HOMEWORK: What has been your favorite lesson during our Global Healing Crisis?

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