While I am not a vegan, I will only consume vegan dessert products. Part of this is due to the influence of my meat-eating boyfriend, whose neuroses are such that any fat-filled/processed sugar dessert sends him into a state of frenzy. This attitude, as you might imagine, is quite contagious. Another reason I only consume […]
Julianne Shepherd
Posted inMusic
Blending Today with’ Today
Enon is Totally Zeitgeistical
Enon Fri Aug 16 Blackbird The new record by New York synth-rock trio Enon, titled High Society, ends up being heavier on the synths than the rock. It’s interesting, though, because there’s a fight between the two. Every alternate song sounds like straightforward, heard-it-before ’80s-’90s rock music (at certain points in the vein of Thin […]
Posted inBooks
Bio:Books
Adrian Tomine
Adrian Tomine Signing Summer Blonde, a collection of Optic Nerve issues five through eight Sunday, July 28, 4 pm Reading Frenzy, 921 SW Oak, 274-1449 Since age 16, Adrian Tomine has been drawing and writing his Optic Nerve comics. His work is very smart, sweet, and sometimes autobiographical, about the mostly unfunny foibles of human […]
Posted inMusic
We Want to Smash
SCIENCE OF YABRA: An All-Caps Band
SCIENCE OF YABRA Thurs July 25 Berbati’s Pan “SCIENCE OF YABRA MEANS TWEAKING THE GUITARS, SMASHING THE DRUMS, AND CRANKING IT AS LOUD AS WE CAN,” types Tim Dunegan. Tim has a habit of writing his emails entirely in capital letters. While normally that would be a vaguely annoying trait, it seems to drive home […]
Posted inMusic
Indiepopera
The Badger King’s Trippy Pop Musical
The Badger King Sun July 28 Meow Meow In the middle of this era of scratchy, disjointed, and unshowered art rock, local band The Badger King has released a sweeping, epic, magical, and pretty rock-pop opera, entitled The Lighthouse, The Giant. Très gauche! And, while the record does meet a few bumps in the musical […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Intuitively Inuit
The Fast Runner is Strikingly Real
The Fast Runner dir. Kunuk Opens Fri July 19 Cinema 21 The Fast Runner is a profoundly excellent movie for many reasons. But one of its strongest points is that it’s totally engrossing–once you’re hooked into the story, all signs of surface noise scratching at your brain completely disappear. This is indicative of the excellent […]
Posted inBooks
Preview: Books
PDX Zine Symposium
The theme for Portland’s second Zine Symposium (PZS), the grassroots extravaganza of workshops, zine-selling, kickball, and community-building, is “Where Zines Take You”–an umbrella theme to encompass all of DIY. This year the expected attendance is around 800 people, from all over the United States, further establishing the PZS’ foothold as another staple of Portland DIY […]
Posted inMusic
The Cute Factor
Mainstream Stars are Cooler in Japan
PuffyAmiYumi Thurs July 11 Aladdin Theater PuffyAmiYumi are pop-culturally fascinating. Brought together, Monkees-style, by a Sony Music Japan talent search in 1996, Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura have since become their country’s Britney Spears, influencing fashion and culture in a way that no other pop icons have–becoming the kind of obsessive, hysterical phenomena that manifests […]
Posted inMusic
Cat Meow Beats
Supersprite Paints Cool Electronic Pictures
Supersprite Fri July 5 Blackbird “I use a minidisc recorder to record sounds around town, like birds. I like to make beats out of cat sounds,” explains Howard Gillam, the soft-spoken, imaginative mastermind behind Supersprite. With not much more than a sampler, a drum machine, and a couple of keyboards, Howard makes extra-cool, easygoing electronic […]
