Wolf Man is the latest remake in a culture haunted by remakes. Look only a few weeks back to Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu, an adaptation of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu, which was an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with key details and names altered to avoid legal action. Though Dracula entered the public domain in the ’60s—which allowed Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola to interpret the book—Eggers remade Murnau’s work over Stoker’s novel, further recycling and recontextualizing a well-known story about a vampire buying real estate and pushing us further and further from the source. 

Eggers adapted an adaptation as much as he’s adapted our popular conception of the first adaptation—drawing on more than a century and countless iterations. Remakes of remakes of remakes; it’s enough to make anyone think there are no young stories anymore, only the increasingly grotesque transformation of the old.

So, with grotesque transformation in mind: Wolf Man is Leigh Whannell’s fourth film as writer-director. It’s also his second remake of a classic horror title, following 2020’s The Invisible Man, which was the first successful reboot of a Universal Monster property after the whole Dark Universe idea fell apart. Remember Tom Cruise’s The Mummy? From 2017? Probably not; it was such a colossal flop it completely extinguished all hope for a new dark ‘n’ gritty shared cinematic landscape for the Universal monsters. The studio course-corrected with Whannell and doubled down on keeping these new remakes self-contained.

Portland, if you love the Mercury's annual Burger Week, then you're going to flip ass-over-teakettle for our newest (and perhaps funnest) food week ever... the Portland Mercury's WIENER WEEK!

That's correct: For one short week (Monday, January 27 through Sunday, February 2), more than 40 (!) of the city’s boldest chefs will craft their most creative, flavor-packed wieners for just $8 a pop. And a special thanks from our pals at Zenner’s and Jim Beam for all their support!

Whether you like ‘em spicy, saucy, or piled high with unexpected toppings, we promise these buns will be packed with something new and exciting! 

Take a look at all those gorgeous wieners here! But before you set off on a glorious, full week of huffing down wieners, here are a few hot tips to keep in mind:

Who's ready to have some fun? Well, the Mercury is here to help with FREE TICKETS to see some of Portland's best concerts and events—our way of saying thanks to our great readers and spread the word about some fantastic upcoming performances! (Psst... if you want to say thanks to the Mercury, please consider making a small monthly contribution to keep us alive and kickin'!) And oh boy, do we have some fun events coming at ya this week! CHECK IT OUT!

• Enter to WIN FREE TICKETS to see Tim Heidecker on January 24 at Revolution Hall!

Visiting on The Slipping Away Tour, Tim Heidecker returns to Portland with The Very Good Band for a perfect evening of music and comedy. Comedian Kyle Mooney joins in support! Get your tickets now or enter to win a free pair of tix here!

Revolution Hall, 1300 SE Stark, Fri Jan 24, 8 pm, $39.50-$114.50, all ages

• Enter to WIN FREE TICKETS to see Shook Twins on January 25 at Aladdin Theater!

Dreamy folk duo Shook Twins joins forces with radiant indie outfit Glitterfox for a spellbinding coheadline at Aladdin Theater! This show is sold out, so enter to win a free pair of tix here!

Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie, Sat Jan 25, 8 pm, sold out, all ages

GREETINGS, BRAINY BOTTOM! It's time once again to put your brainy-brain to the test with this week's edition of POP QUIZ PDX—our weekly, local, sassy-ass trivia quiz. And in this edition, we're testing your knowledge on a variety of topics including local crows, the best name for a snow plow, celebrity bike rides, and your mom's fave clothing store WHICH IS CLOSING. (Hope she finds a new place to buy her mom jeans!) 👩‍💼🤔

READY TO START? Take this week's quiz below, take our previous pop quizzes here, and come back IN TWO WEEKS for a brand spankin' new quiz—going on vacay! (Having a tough time answering this quiz? It's probably because you aren't getting Mercury newsletters! HINT! HINT!) Now crank up that cerebellum, because it's time to get BRAINY!

 Create your own user feedback survey

If you’re reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury’s news reporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we can’t do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support! 

GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND! It's going to be chilly and cloudy today, so I hope you caught some rays yesterday. The sun should return over the weekend, but temperatures will stay low. Still, we're expected to remain in a dry spell for some time. Nice for taking brisk walks, bad for our foliage and preventing fire season. Let's get some more rain soon, IMO. 

Ok, here's the news.

A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the Government Transition Advisory Committee's Council staffing recommendations. The Mercury regrets the error.

"Kneecapped." "Defunded." "Not set up for success."

Portland's city councilors had blunt words to describe the budget bestowed on them by the prior Council.

The city’s new 12-person City Council voted Wednesday evening to increase their budget by nearly $4.6 million. The budget increase includes extra funding for the mayor’s office. Currently, each councilor has one dedicated staffer, and the council has nine shared staff. In a memo last year, Portland’s Government Transition Advisory Committee (GTAC) cautioned that one staffer per councilor would be inadequate. The memo noted that Portland "would have the lowest per-councilor staffing" of any peer city GTAC evaluated.

Councilors said the funds should cover the hiring of one additional staffer for each of them, allowing them to better serve constituents. The funds are unlikely to cover in-district offices, leaving councilors to continue working out of offices in City Hall for now. 

Well folks, if you’re reading this you’ve made it to 2025. This week we vehemently support the seasonal urge to be a hermit, unless you have a really good reason to leave the house. One such good reason includes an early-February charity event that’ll take the form of a live Revolutions Per Movie podcast taping, as well as a movie screening and Portugal. The Man mini-concert. Before that, get into two new music releases that deserve your attention—right Hear in Portland. 

MUST LISTEN: 

New release(s) from a Portland-relevant artist. 

“Move!” Keeks

On January 8, rapper & local ballroom star Keeks (formerly known as Maarquii) dropped her second single to come out under her new moniker to major streaming platforms. “Move!” addresses and claps back at the violence being committed against trans women around the country—typically at the hands of cishet men.  “I would really advise you hoes to leave the dolls the fuck alone,” says Keeks at the top of the song before getting into her first verse. Over an industrial beat by Snugsworth—generously peppered with distorted guitar—Keeks encourages other femme queens to defend themselves by any means necessary: “News flash: Aint nobody trickin’ him/ bitch come get your nigga from me and my bitches have to put the blick in him/ I’m a leave a sharp stick in him/ now your family is missing him/ I’m blowing a kiss to the casket/ I’ve about had enough of the racket.” In the chorus, Keeks urgently chants her plainly stated advisory: “Move, niggas getting violent/ These niggas ain’t okay/ These niggas getting aggravated and I’m trying to see another day.” In an Instagram caption promoting the single, Keeks wrote: “The election was so funny to me because either way nothing was going to change for trans women! I’m absolutely sick of the dehumanization, the sensationalist and harmful rhetoric, the whole lot [of] it. I don’t believe in fear mongering but I do believe in being realistic,” she says, adding “Dolls, it’s time to take note of the way we keep ourselves and each other safe and protected.” We concur.

The largest health care worker strike in Oregon history is continuing this week, with thousands of Providence nurses and a number of doctors taking to picket lines across the state. 

Health care workers began their strike on Friday, January 10. They have two central points of contention with Providence: staffing levels and compensation.

Providence, a nonprofit, Catholic health care organization, has dealt with several strikes in recent years, including in the summer of 2023 and last summer. This one, however, is notable for several reasons. 

Lunar New Year 2025
Lan Su's nearly month-long celebration of the Year of the Snake kicks off on Lunar New Year morning with an energetic lion dance; meet-and-greets with god of wealth caishen, boa constrictors, and a bearded dragon; and hongbao, lucky red envelopes enclosed with a special message for the first 500 visitors. If it's tough to swing a Wednesday morning, visit the garden throughout the month for cultural performances from local dance troupes, martial arts demos, crafts and calligraphy demos, and magical lantern viewing evenings. JANEY WONG
Lan Su Chinese Garden, Old Town-Chinatown (Jan 29–Feb 23)

If you’re reading this, you probably know the value of the Mercury’s news reporting, arts and culture coverage, event calendar, and the bevy of events we host throughout the year. The work we do helps our city shine, but we can’t do it without your support. If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us. Thanks for your support!

GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND!👋

Oh, hello! Would you like your personal love note to run in the print version of the Portland Mercury (available at 500 spots around town) for Valentine's Day? Then listen up, love bugs! Today (Wednesday, January 15) is your LAST CHANCE to submit your FREE Mercury Reader Valentine for your schmoopy-woopy (AKA sex pal)! But don't fret—we'll still accept and print your valentines online (AKA the internet) through February 15. And now? Here's your daily dose of bullshit (AKA NEWS).

IN LOCAL NEWS:

• After furiously backpedaling last month on his plan to require all city employees to stop remote work and return to their downtown offices at least four days per week, Mayor Keith Wilson is reviving his failed (and wrong-headed) scheme—but this time he's ordering 700 NON-union workers (who can't refuse his demands) to return to the office. Here's your reminder that the city seemingly cares more about the health of downtown businesses and "foot traffic" than employees who prioritize increased productivity, taking care of their children, and not sitting in their cars during impossibly long commutes that they don't get paid for. Anyhoo, our Courtney Vaughn has the details!

• And speaking of labor matters: It took four days of striking for Providence healthcare management to decide to resume negotiating with the roughly 5,000 doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers who walked off the job on Friday. Management hasn't negotiated with union reps since they called for the strike on December 30. Striking workers are asking for higher pay, better working conditions, and more sane nurse-to-patient ratios.

Open the overnight warming shelters asap.

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— Kat Mahoney (@kmahoneylaw.bsky.social) January 14, 2025 at 11:41 PM

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson will require supervisors and managers to return full-time to city offices this spring.

In an announcement Tuesday, Wilson said starting in April, all supervisory and managerial employees will have to work in-person at their job sites, rather than the hybrid or remote schedules many of them currently maintain.

“Managers and supervisors set the tone and culture for staff across our city,” Wilson stated. “High-performing organizations across the nation have shown us it’s possible to bring people back together, while also remaining flexible.”

For all our complaints about music streaming platforms, you could argue that they deserve a little credit for revealing the flimsiness of our once-rigid borders around music styles. The breakdown of those genre walls has been felt far beyond playlists and record collections and now ripples even deeper into the lineups of genre-specific events like the upcoming Portland’s Folk Festival. 

The core of this two-day event, which goes down on January 17 and 18 at Crystal Ballroom and Lola’s Room, remains heartfelt songs of personal and social upheaval, primarily played on acoustic instruments. But organizers Scott Gilmore and Sarah Vitort—best known for the music that they make as Fox & Bones—are thoughtfully and wonderfully stretching the definition of folk to include everything from the psych-pop sounds of Presidio to singer Arietta Ward’s blistering funk and R&B.

“We want to create a wide berth around what folk music is,” Gilmore said. “I feel that folk music is about the intention set behind the music. It’s about saying something like, ‘What are you trying to express in your music?’ We want to make sure not to cut anyone off from that.”

The question “Why is this basketball team bad?” can make for some very complicated answers. Mismatched or redundant personnel, poor coaching, crummy work environment, archaic tactical makeup, “Bad Vibes”... all these things require lengthy explanations, but are still real, terrible reasons why your team can be sinking into the ocean. 

What a blessing for an author, as well as a team, that the Portland Trail Blazers, sitting on a 13-25 record and a whopping -8.3 Net Rating*, the 28th worst in the league this year, are not afflicted by these soft problems. No, the Blazers just don’t have enough good players. This is an uncommon problem for the team in their history, which has been, 54 or so seasons in, pretty good on the whole. The past bad versions of the Blazers were cursed by lengthy stretches of mediocrity, 30-year-old fringe all-stars stinking up the joint, charismatic guards lording over sadder and sadder fiefdoms. To just be “a team full of guys who aren’t good while their co-workers are too young to contribute,” that’s a new thing.

Can the Blazers get enough good players to turn this around, make the playoffs, and inspire a weary nation? No. They cannot. Halfway through the season, it’s apparent that if you want to see the Blazers win games on the regular, you’re going to have to wait. I know that’s really sad, especially if you live an unexamined life, rooting through the dirt looking for every corn niblet of pleasure you can get from this life.

My wife and I are a lesbian married couple in Chicago. We are also proud moms to our wonderful, dynamic 17-year-old trans son. “Michael” is a great kid, and we have always enjoyed a close relationship. It has recently come to light that he is engaging in penetrative sex with men he meets on a gay hookup app. We discovered this because of bloody laundry which we thought was breakthrough bleeding, a trip to his gender doc and a subsequent chlamydia diagnosis brought this all out. Since this revelation — and after a lecture about safe-sex practices — I am now living in a state of terror. I’m terrified our son will be a victim of sexual violence. I am terrified that he will be emotionally scarred by some fetishist. I am terrified he will get a life-threatening STI. My instincts are telling me to take a leave from work, and whisk him away from the city and talk and talk until he sees the danger of this behavior. Is that an over-reaction? Are there therapists who specialize in this? Is there any way this will work out well for him? I desperately want to do right by my son, and he is acting like this is “no big deal,” but my mama instincts are screaming shut this down!

Manic Over My Son

The stage of life your child is going through — the transition to adulthood autonomy (which kids do without a fully functioning pre-frontal cortex) — is filled with risk, and you can’t protect your child from all of it.