A wistful, good-hearted look at a lost part of movie history.
Robert Ham
Robert Ham is the Mercury's former Copy Chief. He writes regularly about music, film, arts, sports, and tech. He lives semi-consciously in far SE Portland with his wife, child, and four ornery cats.
Posted inArts
John Waters Interview: Mr. Know-It-All Talks Tarnished Wisdom and Why He Stopped Making Films
Your favorite filthy father X-mas returns!
Posted inTheater & Performance
John Waters Interview: Mr. Know-It-All Talks Tarnished Wisdom and Why He Stopped Making Films
GREG GORMAN John Waters doesn’t plan on making a movie any time soon, even if it’s been 15 years since his last feature, 2004’s A Dirty Shame. If the stories the 73-year-old cult filmmaker recounts in his latest book Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder are to be believed, Waters was fine […]
Posted inMusic
Local Musician Lauren K. Newman Dead at 41
Lauren K. Newman courtesy of the artist According to multiple reports from friends and collaborators on social media, multi-instrumentalist, writer, and recording engineer Lauren K .Newman has died at the age of 41. A fixture of the Portland music scene since relocating here from Pensacola, Florida, Newman juggled multiple musical projects including her one-woman post-rock […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Can Concert Films Help Save the Music Industry?
Justice in IRIS: A Space Opera Dominic Louth Recently, my friend who teaches jazz guitar at several schools in the area let slip a small, but startling detail about his students: None of them buy music. It’s a strange thing to hear about budding professional artists who will, soon enough, be plying their wares to […]
Posted inMusic
Press Play: Music News for the Week of November 29
MAITA courtesy of Kill Rock Stars Hello, fellow music geeks! Back with another edition of our weekly news blast Press Play and… well… there ain’t a lot going on right now. In this dead zone between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there’s not a lot of news dropping, especially news that affects the local scene. But we […]
Posted inBooks
Fur Not Light Poetry Review: Jeff Alessandrelli’s Latest Work Is Perfectly Balanced and Deeply Funny
COURTESY OF BURNSIDE REVIEW PRESS Fur Not Light, Jeff Alessandrelli’s latest volume of poetry, is a postmodern data dump—a purge of cultural reference points (see if you can spot the nods to the Misfits, Wittgenstein, Allen Ginsburg, and the Notorious B.I.G.), phrases stuck in a loop, names of friends and lovers, and strange yet relatable […]
Posted inSports
Portland Diamond Project Extends Terminal 2 Review By Six Months
Terminal 2 photo by Port of Portland The Portland Diamond Project (PDP) apparently needs a bit more time to determine whether their chosen home for a new baseball stadium will meet their needs. As we wrote about in September, the leadership team, which includes former Nike executive Craig Cheek and R&B superstar Ciara Wilson, picked […]
Posted inSports
The Salem-Keizer Volcanoes’ 2020 Season Could Be Its Last
Fans at Volcanoes Stadium courtesy of the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes Last month, news broke that Major League Baseball (MLB) had proposed radically restructuring a segment of the minor leagues that could result in the elimination of several lower division Class A, short season, and rookie teams. The proposal would affect 42 teams around the country, including […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Waves Is a Beautiful, Uniquely American Look at One Florida Family
A24 To explain much of the plot of Waves would be a disservice. Even a quick description of writer/director Trey Edward Shults’ story—a uniquely American, character-driven drama about a Florida family’s idyllic bubble bursting—feels like too much of a reveal. As with its title, you need to give yourself over to the film’s turbulent narrative […]
Posted inMusic
Record Review: Federale, No Justice
Cover art by Hickory Mertsching JEALOUS BUTCHER RECORDS Federale has spent the better part of 15 years carving out a pleasant niche in the music scene of Portland and beyond. It’s a fantasy world where spaghetti Westerns play nonstop in a dusty drive-in theater and Lee Hazlewooad is still holding court in an LA recording […]
Posted inArts
Fur Not Light Poetry Review: Jeff Alessandrelli’s Latest Work Is Perfectly Balanced and Deeply Funny
I, too, would like to know how to fold a burrito without losing its contents.