C to C: Papercuts by Nikki McClure and Beatrice Coron Reading Frenzy Through July 31 Whether through her woodcuts, papercuts, booklets, or song-chanting, Olympian artist Nikki McClure has always been able to channel organic beauty through a method of deceptive simplicity. Her artistic embellishments tend to be simple shapes–lines and swirls, circles and rectangles–yet they […]
Julianne Shepherd
Posted inMusic
Bow Down to the Almighty
Lachrymator: Metal in Your Eye
Lachrymator w/ Heavy Johnson Trio, High on Fire July 20 Satyricon Lachrymator almost had to cancel this show, because one of the band’s guitarists, Stane Dethenstein (ex-Kung Fu’s), was supposed to go on vacation with his ailing grandfather. Instead, Dethenstein asked his grandpa if he could postpone. Grandpa agreed, saying that he wanted to do […]
Posted inZINES
CUT, PASTE, PHOTOCOPY
Three Easy Steps to Self-Empowerment
Portland Zine Symposium July 13-15 Portland State University DIY: Do it yourself. It’s the most important philosophy of the 21st Century. To some, it might conjure shallow associations with crusty vegans, or scarlet-letter “anarchists,” or ratty-tatty, pedal-pushing bike punks. But if you examine the idea of DIY more deeply, you’ll see that it’s an alternative […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Soul-Sucking Aliens
Final Fantasy: a Realistic Slice of Cheese
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Now Playing dir. Sakaguchi Various All right, people. You have a set of standards you use to gauge whether or not you like a movie, and it’s time to reevaluate them. I’m not asking you to put them aside–never, ever. But see, if you go into Final Fantasy: The Spirits […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Très Bête
Screwing and Murdering! Wahoo!
Baise-Moi (Rape Me) dir. Desppentes, Trinh Thi Opens Fri July 6 Cinema 21 This movie was BANNED! It’s unclear whether it was because of the rape scene in the first 10 minutes, or the close-ups of actual “penis-vagina” penetration, or all the violence, or a combination of the three. (Although I think it’s because they […]
Posted inMusic
Revolution is Love
Spearhead’s Dignity and Groove
Michael Franti & Spearhead Tues July 10 Berbati’s Pan “How do we holdonto the dignity of our spirit in a world that seems to be set on crushing it?” This is a quote from Michael Franti, leader of the band Spearhead, an outspoken grassroots activist and a general person of integrity. He’s describing the underlying […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Never-Never Land
Tyrese Floats in Amniotic Fluid
Baby Boy dir. John Singleton Now Playing Various Theaters Baby Boy, John Singleton’s companion film to Boyz N the Hood, follows a single male character, Jody (played by the sexy-ass model Tyrese Gibson), through his struggle to grow up and become A Real Man. That’s the plot. Beyond that, it gets kind of confusing. There’s […]
Posted inMusic
My Best Nightmare
The Scary Metal Band and its Frightening Allure
Lightning Bolt w/ Thrones, Pink & Brown, Emergency Thurs June 28 Meow Meow “Lightning Bolt is the best live band, right now.”–My friend Pete Swanson Providence, Rhode Island’s Lightning Bolt, with Brian Chippendale on drums and Brian Gibson on bass, is, according to Load Records, “the loudest band in the world.” The thought that any […]
Posted inMusic
The Mellifluous Thespian
Oly Superstars Glom Performance and Rock
Dr. Frockrocket’s Vivifying Menagerie and Medicine Show Sat June 23, 7:30 pm Meow Meow While classical,jazz, and electronic-based music are often removed from their traditional context with performance or on film scores, rock music rarely transcends its formula of stage, musicians, and audience. The rock opera is certainly an exception, but how many of those […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Unrequited Swooning
Imagine–a Dramatic Merchant-Ivory Film!
Maurice dir. James Ivory June 15-17 Hollywood Theater I’ve only seen Maurice once; I was in high school, and my best friend was struggling with coming out, thus making me watch every queer movie ever made (a surprising amount of which were Australian, but that’s another story). We were 17, melodramatic, and filled to the […]
Posted inArt
the writings on the wall
Post-Graffiti and Legal Public Art
Graffiti is the most misunderstood element of hiphop. Since it involves destruction of property and is therefore illegal (unless you go to the legal graff wall in NE Portland), it’s easy for people to instantly demonize it without bothering to understand it as a form of cultural and artistic expression. J.D. Davis is a Portland […]
Posted inMusic
MERCURY MUSIC QUARTERLY
THE FOUR ELEMENTS OF HIP HOP: PLUS ONE
It’s been 13 years since Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions gave your parents a freakout. Since then, and now more than ever, underground hiphop’s been going in a more intensely political direction. Crazy socialist activist hiphop with ethics like punk rock, combatting mainstream lies and spreading the truth so you can hear […]