Pine Street Theater, 215 SE Ninth, Saturday July 29th, $12 in advance ,18 & over, mandatory dress & ID. THIS IS AN EVENT where serious, silly, and absurd mingle as one and the same, aiming for pure titillation. It’s a celebration of bondage, dominance, spankings, cross dressing, terribly uncomfortable shoes, leather, fire dancing, belly dancing, […]
Monica Drake
Posted inTheater & Performance
The Glowing Pumpkin Incident
Stark Raving Theater, 3430 SE Belmont St, 232-7072 7:30pm Sundays, $6-$15 The Glowing Pumpkin Incident is a work in progress, performed with a few props on a set established for another show. The narrative is meant to be an adult’s childhood memory, complete with incongruities and hazy edges. Through most of the play, an off-stage […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Horrific Idealism
The Specialist Captures the Stark and Poignant Reality of a Nazi Specialist
AS ADOLF EICHMANN, the Nazi specialist in transportation and “the Jewish Question,” testifies about his role in the Holocaust, on the other side of the room a court assistant operates a reel-to-reel tape player. On the woman’s arm, caught by the camera as though by accident, is tattooed a string of numbers, a small, chilling […]
Posted inUncategorized
Last Supper
SCHÖNDECKEN COFFEE ROASTERS
6720 SE 16th, 236-8234 In the heart of Westmoreland, where Bybee meets Milwaukie, there are two obvious coffee choices: Starbucks and Marsee Baking. Starbucks we all know as the word’s largest coffee chain, an affiliate of Kraft Foods, working in collusion with Pepsi-Cola on projects like “Frappacino.” Marsee is an Oregon business, and a thriving […]
Posted inUncategorized
LOS TRES HERMANOS
SE 33rd and Division Once, in a Mexican border town, I asked to use the bathroom at a taco stand after I’d eaten three, four, or maybe even five wonderfully greasy little tacos. I’d been ordering one after another, standing at the counter, on the side of a dusty road. The woman and son who […]
Posted inNews
Farewell to The Lawn
What’s Lost When a Portland Landmark Turns Condo
THROUGH A BASEMENT WINDOW that used to be boarded, where it once said in scrawly black marker, “Knock before noon and I’ll kill you,” a passerby can now see the sleek appliances of a modern kitchen, a stovetop so clean it seems no one has ever lived there. This former basement is labeled “The Garden […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Family-Style Porn
Middle-class Swinging and The Lifestyle
THERE’S A LOT OF HUMANITY in the film The Lifestyle–human tragedy revealed in the longing for fantasy levels of sexual pleasure alongside the inevitable fate of aging and physical decay. The Lifestyle is a documentary about organized “sport fucking,” group recreational sex among middle class suburban Americans. The subtext is corporeal: cellulite, scars, smoker’s wrinkles, […]
Posted inBooks
Book Review
THE HAPPY BOTTOM RIDING CLUB by Lauren Kessler (Random House) Book reading and signing, Thurs June 22 at Twenty-Third Avenue Books, 1015 NW 23rd Ave, 224-6203 Some of the best role models for girls are women who smoke and drink, who ignore housekeeping, dress haphazardly at best, chase sexy, younger men, work with big ideas […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Waiting for the Quince
Dream of Light Captures Life, Death and Patience
THIS IS A FILM ABOUT SUBTLETY, nuance and patience: A Spanish painter, Antonio Lopez Garcia, stands in a courtyard trying to render light through the leaves of a Quince tree. Ultimately, the artist gives in to failure, compromised by the brevity of seasons, light and life. The artist’s painting, like the film, is an effort […]
Posted inBooks
Stevan Allred, Writer
Bio
His book, The Crimes of Billy RedEyes, won the 1998 Matthew Thornton award. The novel is still seeking a publisher. Allred’s stories have run in The Text, Syzygy and other magazines. He’s teaching at Haystack this summer. How do you feel about the struggle for publication? “Rejection is part of being an artist. It’s the […]
Posted inBooks
Book Review
What Tom is Reading
In the desert at Summerlake Hot Springs–for four days with over 20 writers, staying in a row of Airstream trailers–one of the best things is seeing what books each writer packed. I’ve come with books on Joan of Arc; transcripts of her testimony. Joanna Rose, author of Little Miss Strange, brought Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing […]