It’s a typical Portland story, and one that seems too good to be true. A couple starts selling food at the farmers’ market, attracting a clutch of groupies every week. They open their own café in a decidedly untrendy part of town. Most everything is made from scratch, including homemade ice cream, with other goods […]
Ned Lannamann
Ned Lannamann is a writer and editor in Portland, Oregon. He writes about film, music, TV, books, travel, tech, food, drink, outdoors, and other things.
Posted inMusic
Find Yourself Here
Foreign Born, LA Bred
There’s nothing about Foreign Born’s full-length debut, On the Wing Now, that sounds specifically Californian. In fact, it seems like it might have crept down from Toronto or Montreal, with plenty of splashing cymbals, interlocking orchestral guitars, and icy reverberation glimmering by the torchlight of the band’s hopeful melodies. It’s a genuinely good album; don’t […]
Posted inUncategorized
Just Because It’s Sustainable
Feel-Good Eating at Trébol
At this point, it’s become de rigueur for any new restaurant that takes itself seriously to tout its reliance on local and sustainable ingredients. This occasionally permits “feel-good” eating (as opposed to “taste-good” eating), provoking such justifications from the diner as, “Doesn’t it feel good to gnaw on this winter salad of greens with the […]
Posted inMusic
Chip Music
8-Bit Sounds
It may seem like a stretch to think of a Nintendo Game Boy as a musical instrument, but homemade programs turned the primitive device into just such a thing. European game nerds started a movement in music using the low-bit sounds of old computers and game consoles; it thrives on web communities like micromusic.com and […]
Posted inMusic
If You Can Lean, You Can Clean
No One Works Harder than Black Lips
It’s a universal, time-tested truth in rock ‘n’ roll: If a band’s guitarist takes out his penis during a show and pees into his own mouth, then sprays it onto members of the audience, the music is bound to be overshadowed. Black Lips guitarist/vocalist Cole Alexander infamously pulled this stunt, and it’s likely the first […]
Posted inMusic
Hard-Luck Slim
The Authentic Langhorne Slim
He took the name of his Pennsylvania hometown. He sings blues songs in a raspy holler. He calls his woman “mama.” And, despite being a white guy in his 20s, Langhorne Slim somehow manages to do these things without sounding like a total asshole. It’s no act. Slim and his band, the War Eagles, have […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Horses Don’t Act Like That
Ned Visits a Sparkly, Rainbow-Hued Land of Wonderment, My Little Pony Live!
This past weekend, the cultural event of the season took place at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts’ Newmark Theatre. The VEE Corporation (makers of Sesame Street Live!) brought the highly anticipated My Little Pony Live! to the Portland stage—much to the delight of the city’s four-year-old girls and grown-up gay potheads. For the […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Somebody Killed Somebody
The Walker‘s Game of Fill in the Blanks
Writer/director Paul Schrader plays a variation on his familiar theme of “sex as commodity” with The Walker, a character study flimsily disguised as a murder mystery. Schrader also wrote the rickety script, a disappointingly confusing vehicle in which too much information is dispensed through dialogue and name dropping. It’s a far cry from Schrader’s glory […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Tel Aviv Bohemia
Waiting for The Bubble to Pop
The city of Tel Aviv, Noam (Ohad Knoller) tells us, is situated in complete ignorance of its natural surroundings. It was built, perversely, in seclusion from the seaside, with its streets running parallel to the Mediterranean to block the mild breeze. It’s also where the Israeli gay community has created a small patch of bohemian […]
Posted inShopping
The 2007 Mercury Shopping Guide
(or, Where We Got You that Stuffed Coyote
for Your Wedding
Pullout: Shopping Issue 07