We made it another week, everybody. Another week of holding on, being strong, knowing when to stay plugged in, and when to disconnect for a second. There's a lot of ways to practice self-care while sheltering in place, and art is a big part of that, whether it's livestreamed music, binging a great show, losing yourself in a classic video game, catching that one movie you've been meaning to catch, getting carried away with a compelling audiobook, podcast, or radio drama... hit the links below, and let yourself let go a little.
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Monday, April 6
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
We’re living in an emotionally draining time, and Never Rarely Sometimes Always is as sobering as it is affecting, so be your own judge as to whether you can handle viewing it right now. But if you have the bandwidth for it, you should allow this film about abortion access, misogyny, friendship, and the desperation of recognizing your own powerlessness to envelop you. Whatever you’re imagining this film to be like given its subject matter, you’re probably wrong—far from an in-your-face political film, it’s a tonal masterpiece, one that steeps the viewer in its significance rather than bludgeoning them with it. We can’t ever fully understand the experiences of other people, but if you’ve wondered what it’s like to be a pregnant teenage girl in a country that’s hostile to abortion rights, watching Never Rarely Sometimes Always is probably the closest you’ll get.
(Now Available, 48hr rental VOD, $19.99) BLAIR STENVICK
Give Yourself a Haircut
A lot of us are floating right around the month-long mark in self-quarantine, and either through restlessness, or inability to just handle whatever's been happening to that mop atop your skull, you might be considering just grabbing those kitchen scissors, squinting at your reflection, and going to town. The impulse is understandable... but don't do that. If you're going to cut your own hair, first you need to order legitimate hair-cutting shears (they're usually around $20) and then, while you wait for them to arrive, pore through this pretty comprehensive Cosmopolitan roundup from a couple weeks ago (they knew what was comin'), where they've not only suggested the best equipment, but grabbed only the best YouTube self-hair-care tutorials for all types of hair. And hey, look at it this way: Even if you do fuck it up... we're probably not coming out of quarantine for awhile anyway, so what the hell. It'll grow out, right? Right!
(Your Bathroom, Seriously, Be Careful, You Could Lose an Ear or Something)
Fight COVID, Play Games, Read Comics, Be Humble
Today is the last day to get in on the latest bit of Humble Bundle goodness, a drive to raise money for the organizations out there directly responding to the coronavirus outbreak. Humble Bundle has raised millions in the short time it's been around, and this latest deal of theirs is a doozy: for $30 you get over $1000-worth of PC video games and ebooks, with game titles including Undertale, Superhot, Hollow Knight, Brothers, Broken Age, Agents of Mayhem, and much more, as well as book titles including Locke & Key vol. 1, The Boys vol. 1, Saga vol. 1, Criminal vol. 1, Lumberjanes: The Infernal Compass and so, so much more. You don't have to only pay $30, either. You can go over if you're feeling a little more generous. But either way—you'll be helping people who need that help and helping yourself to an instant backlog of amazing content.
(Now Available, Humble Bundle.com, $30 minimum)
Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby is one of the best essayists, memoirists, bloggers, funny-as-hell-people-using-words-'n'-such currently working, and her latest collection Wow, No Thank You is finally on shelves. Of course, those shelves aren't browsable by us right now, and the reading she was set to give at Powell's today isn't happening, but the book is still there, and you absolutely should grab a copy and join her on a raw, hilarious, and unflinchingly honest trip into her 40s, with plenty of other (mis-) adventures along the way.
(Now Available, ebook & audiobook at MultCo Library, free w/ card; trade paperback, Powell's.com, $15.95; Audiobook narrated by the author, Audible.com, $28, free 30-day-trial here)
Still Bill
Last week, a man who became known and beloved for telling us all we could lean on him, left us at the age of 81 due to heart problems. Bill Withers' voice was unique, it was comforting, and for anyone who heard it and came to rely on its calming influence, it was essential. "Lean on Me" was his biggest hit, but digging into his discography revealed so many more rewards: "Who is He (And What Does He Mean to You)", "Use Me," "Ain't No Sunshine," "Grandma's Hands" (which got sped up by Teddy Riley to become the basis for "No Diggity" decades later), "Lovely Day" (which somehow has about 3000 less y's in its title than it should)... it's a hell of a legacy he left. In 2009, filmmakers Damani Baker and Alex Vlack made a documentary about the man's life and his impact on music. The documentary is only available through AppleTV/iTunes currently, but it's more than worth the $3.99 rental fee, if only to spend a little more time with the man.
(Now Streaming, AppleTV/iTunes, $3.99)
Live Wire Radio! House Party
The only way this could be even more perfect is if Kid 'n' Play were actually hosting Portland's world-famous live 'n' local public radio variety show. That might still happen, who knows, but the tried and true (and charming-as-hell) team of Luke Burbank on hosting duties and Elena Passarello doing the announcing present the latest episode of their "socially distanced" special edition of Live Wire!. This week's guests include music by jazz vocalist Jimmie Herrod performing an original piece from his Manhattan apartment, comedy from Brooks Wheelan, and a talk with Shea Serrano, The Ringer contributor and author of Basketball (and Other Things) who would very much like you to read his most recent book, Movies (and Other Things).
(Now Streaming, LiveWireRadio.org, free, all ages)
Action Bronson
The man force of nature known as Bam Bam Baklava won't be in Portland tonight as planned, but if this security-sockin, mic-rockin, walking thunderclap in emcee-form is still sort of a mystery to you, take the time to check out a video or two, and then, then: let this man teach you how to make an absolute beast of a chicken parm, straight out the pages of his annotated guide to eating well, Fuck, That's Delicious. He raps, he cooks... Action Bronson: Renaissance Man.
Tuesday, April 7
Letterkenny
BAD NEWS: Tonight was supposed to be the night you got to witness Letterkenny: Live at Revolution Hall—that is, if you were lucky enough to have scored tickets in the three and-a-half minutes they were available back in 2019. Of course, COVID had something to say about all that, and now there's no Letterkenny: Live. GREAT NEWS: The show is streamable on Hulu. It was always streamable, it hasn't gone anywhere, but just in general, the news that Letterkenny is streamable? Great news. Letterkenny is ostensibly a sitcom about the escapades of small-town Canadian cliques bumping into each other, but it's really just live-action Looney Tunes for linguistics nerds, a love-letter to the silly ways silly people communicate their serious passions. Sure, there's a few duds in its run—you don't hit eight seasons without stubbing your toe once or twice—but when it's good? It's fuckin' great.
(Now Streaming, Hulu, $5.99 per month, free trial here)
Build Your Own Gaming Console!
The next generation of gaming consoles is on its way, but they're probably going to be pretty expensive. You're hunkered down and sheltered in place, feeling fidgety and frugal. Why not skip out on buying a whole-ass new console and build one instead? You're not the only person to have this thought: Retro Gaming Consoles have been a thing for awhile now (remember that one Christmas when the NES Mini was regularly going for 3x what an actual NES sold for in '86?) and building them with mini-PC parts isn't that technically challenging, especially not when you've got the folks at 9to5Toys spending their coronavirus down-time walking you through the steps to build your own Nintendo/Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis/Sony PlayStation miracle machine. You'll have to order some parts to be shipped, and there's a bit in this video about 3D printing you can probably ignore (just buy a pre-fab case instead), but when you're done, you'll be drowning in classic gaming goodness and you can tell everyone on your next Zoom meeting "Hey, look at the thing I made!"
(Now available, Don't Forget: Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B, A, Start)
NBA 2K Players Tournament
March was disallowed from the sort of tournament-based entertainment many are used to, especially of the basketball variety; but April's got us covered on that front: ESPN will be airing head-to-head clashes between some of the NBA's biggest stars as they establish who among them is the best at NBA 2K20. The early rounds were finished up last Friday, and there were quite a few upsets already (including Portland's Hassan Whiteside getting trounced by trash-talker extraordinaire Patrick Beverly) but tonight begins the quarterfinals. Proceeds will benefit ongoing coronavirus relief efforts.
(Tues Apr 7, 7 pm, ESPN, Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, free, all ages, through April 11.)
Spliff: Online Film Festival
The creators of the world-famous, world-changing, (and financially responsible-for-keeping-some-alt-weeklies-afloat-cough-ahem) juggernaut HUMP! have turned their sex-drenched gaze to pursuits of a more laid-back and leisurely type: STONER MOVIES. The Spliff Film Festival got off to a strong start in 2019, and as a remedy for the Stay At Home blues millions are feeling right now, the Spliff Film Festival is now online! Even better, its lineup of weed-infused short films are available on a pay-what-you-will basis. Cough up as much (or as little) as you wish in order to check out works that will make you laugh, make you think, and make you ask "what the fuck was that?"
(Now Streaming, Spliff Film Fest.com, Pay-what-you-can)
The Social Network
In 2010, David Fincher was coming off the disappointing sap of Benjamin Button, and was set to release a movie about the creation of Facebook, a subject that didn't very much seem all that interesting. But Aaron Sorkin's script punched along at light speed, telling an endlessly complex story with machined precision, and that's exactly what Fincher needed to get back in control, and directing with a deftness and command he'd never shown before. From its opening scene, it's hard not to be floored: In 2003, in a bar outside Harvard, a geeky undergrad named Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) has an increasingly intense conversation with his increasingly fed-up girlfriend, Erica (Rooney Mara). Sorkin's razor-sharp dialogue zips back and forth; Eisenberg and Mara's faces begin to subtly strain; tensions rise and rise and snap. And then Zuckerberg, calmly furious, runs—literally, runs—back to his dorm, spiraling into a festering frenzy of drunken blogging and effortless hacking. So begins this movie (one of the best of the 21st century), and so began the media empire that eventually led us all... here. It's on Netflix now. You should watch it.
(Now Streaming, Netflix, $8.99 per month, free trial here) ERIK HENRIKSEN
Much Ado About Nothing
Just because you can't actually go to the park doesn't mean you can't still enjoy some Shakespeare in the Park, and thanks to PBS' Great Performances series, one of the very best versions of Much Ado About Nothing is available, for free, through May 27th. This version of the Bard's much-loved comedy was recorded live at Delacorte Theater in NYC's Central Park, directed by Tony Award-winner Kenny Leon, and stars Danielle Brooks (Taystee from Orange is the New Black!) as Beatrice.
Wednesday, April 8
Parasite
The Best Picture-winning Parasite is director Bong Joon-ho at his very best. At turns hilarious and deeply unsettling, it’s a departure from the sci-fi bent of his recent movies (the post-apocalyptic Snowpiercer in 2013 and the factory-farming-themed Okja in 2017), though it’s no less concerned with the state of society, and specifically how the disparity between the haves and have-nots seems to be widening. The resulting film offers an at turns hilarious and deeply unsettling look at class and survival.
(Now Streaming, Hulu, $5.99 per month, free trial here) JASMYNE KEIMIG
Find the G-Spot
She Bop is a local treasure for anyone who gives a damn about making sex as good as it can be, and that should include everyone reading this sentence right now. Their storefronts are closed but you can still order their fine goods online, and even better, you can sign up for helpful online classes like today's online tutorial from Stella Harris, "Mapping the Vulva: Licking, Touching, Teasing, and Talking," aimed at dispelling misinformation, clearing up any sense of mystery and eradicating all sense of shame centered there. Basically, if you want to know how to unlock a "whole world of pleasure," this class should be a very good start.
(Wed April 8, 5:30 pm, She Bop via Zoom, $25)
Thundercat
Stephen Bruner is finally in the spotlight. After years playing bass for punk legends Suicidal Tendencies, dropping beats for Snoop Dogg and Flying Lotus, and being a behind-the-scenes musical architect of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Bruner is gaining success as a standalone artist, delivering deliciously funky basslines, jazz solos, and haunting falsetto under the stage name Thundercat. Because of his wide-ranging resume, Thundercat is able to seamlessly fuse genres, blending ’90s R&B with Miles Davis-era jazz to produce tracks that have everyone nodding along to the beat. He rightfully headlined the 2020 PDX Jazz Festival, and he just dropped a new album worth soaking in for a day or two, titled It Is What It Is. ALEX ZIELINSKI
Parks and Recreation
This lockdown is providing a lot of opportunities to discover new works of art, and to revisit old ones, and this week, why not rewatch one of the gentlest, kindest sitcoms of the last couple decades (Parks and Recreation) with its star (Amy Poehler)? To clarify: She's not hosting a watch-along on Zoom or Insta or anything like that. But she is binge-ing the whole show right now with her kids, so in spirit you can be watching it right along with her! She made the case for rewatching it on Late Night with Seth Meyers last week: "It is such a good show to watch right now, because it makes you feel good, and it's about a bunch of people working together to solve problems. But it's really funny, because my kids are always like, 'Mom, what happens?' And I'm like, 'I don't know. I don't remember any of it!' It's one long blur. I remember shooting the scenes and how I felt when I was shooting the scenes, but the actual story of episode-to-episode, I couldn't even tell you. So it's pretty fun watching again." Even if you do remember the story, she's still not wrong. Parks & Rec is a show that's almost always fun to watch again. Anything with a theme song that bouncy alone...
(Now Streaming, Netflix , Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube)
Mdou Moctar
There are around three million Tuareg people living in the Saharan region of Africa, and they turn out an impressive number of musicians who find audiences in other parts of the world. There’s Tinariwen, Bombino, Tamikrest, and Imarhan, and now it’s unquestionably Mdou Moctar’s turn. The Nigerian guitarist first made a name for himself on African MP3-sharing networks and has raised his international profile over the past several years with a series of excellent albums released on the Portland-based Sahel Sounds record label. His newest—last year’s Ilana: The Creator—is an intoxicating fusion of hypnotic rhythms and searing guitar work that will go down as one of 2019’s best releases in any genre. BEN SALMON
Thursday, April 9
Free HBO!
In a move that is equal parts "Hey, you're cooped up, enjoy some stuff we already licensed to Amazon, but for reals free this time!" and "Enjoy this taste so when we drop HBO Max next month you'll say fuck it and stay signed up" HBO has made about 500 hours of content available on their HBO Now app with no paywall. Included is the best TV show ever (The Wire), the other best TV show ever (The Sopranos), the best ending to a TV show ever (Six Feet Under), the best show about an assassin who wants to be an actor (Barry), the amazing McMillions documentary that's about 15x better than Tiger King ever was, and (squints at list) uh... My Dog Skip, starring Malcolm in the Middle and a cute doggo. Click here for the full list of programming.
(Now Streaming, HBO, free)
Make Yourself a Couple Gallons of Beer
City Brew Tours, the company behind Brewvana's beer tours, is switching up how it shares the craft beer experience now that it can't shuttle people around Portland's wonderland of beer-making establishments. Instead, it's going to help make you a homebrewer, with "The Live Homebrew Experience" an online class that includes a specially prepared beer-making kit shipped to your house. In two and a half hours the class should have you safely on your way to making two and a half gallons of either pale ale or amber ale—although for $40 extra, you can make another two and a half gallons of IPA or brown ale.
(Thurs, Sat & Sun 1 pm, Through April, citybrewtours.com, $99)
Bad Boys For Life
Michael Bay's absence behind the camera (although he briefly appears in a cameo that I reflexively booed) is immediately apparent in Bad Boys for Life, which finds Will Smith and Martin Lawrence coming together one more last (?) time as they cautiously descend the sunset slopes of their mountainous careers. The action—still glistening, swooping, and forever circling, as directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah do some damn good Bay-raoke—is slower and mostly coherent. But even more remarkable: For the first time that I can remember, this is a Bad Boys movie primarily fueled by emotion as opposed to disdainfully rejecting it. And get this: That emotion? HUMILITY! I know. What the fuck, right? But fucks are abundant in Bad Boys for Life, and given often, flying just as freely as the one-liners, bullets, and grenades going off frequently and everywhere.
(Now Available, Amazon, iTunes, $19.99)
Battlestar Galactica
HBO isn't the only entertainment conglomerate getting on the "free is a very good price" thing: NBC/Universal has returned one of the best sci-fi shows ever made to free streaming. Battlestar Galactica isn't some sort of underappreciated gem in this corner of the country: Portland once held sellout screenings of episodes at the Bagdad Theater (Starbuck herself even showed up to one); one of Portlandia's biggest sketches was built around how bingeworthy Battlestar is. Galactica's reputation has diminished due to (bad) "conventional wisdom" about its (good, actually) ending, but the show has aged tremendously well in the meantime, and that blend of mysticism, religion, politics, and pressure is maybe even more potent here in 2020 than it was back in 2004. Plus, as Emily VanDerWerff correctly states in her essay: Bear McCreary's score for this show is the best score ever written for TV. So even if you're not that drawn in by the images, at least your ears will be happy.
(Now Streaming, SyFy.com, free w/ ads)
Pearl Jam
You know it's been a really busy couple of weeks in the music world when Pearl Jam drops a new record and it gets a little lost in the sauce. But that's okay: the band has always been at their best when they're playing the underdog role, and that's definitely what's going on with Gigaton, a long-gestating (and just plain long by Pearl Jam standards) attempt to seriously shake up their sound after about 30 years. Load up the LP in your music app of choice and let 'em stomp around your headphones for an hour to see if they succeeded.
(Now Streaming, Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, etc.)
Lidia Yuknavitch
Lidia Yuknavitch is a creative force in Portland’s literary scene. Not only are her books award-winning best sellers, but they’re often groundbreaking, like her Oregon Book Award-winning anti-memoir The Chronology of Water, or her novel The Small Backs of Children in which she strove to break the novel’s form. Her latest book is a short story collection titled Verge, which she described in an interview with Arts Editor Suzette Smith as "a whole book of big flame. These stories are all catching a character on the edge of something. They’re either gonna make the worst choice ever or the best choice ever. Change or grow or die. And they’re vibrating. All the times in my life when I was about to do something that was either gonna blow up my world or bring something great, I felt a vibration." Feel that same vibration by clicking on any of those links to read the Mercury's reviews of those titles, and then click on the links below to order any (or all) of her works from Powell's.
(Now Available, Powell's.com, $9.95-29.95)
Rethink All the Bad Things You Thought About Guy Fieri
At the bottom of this post, I'm going to link to a much-seen stand-up clip from hometown hero Shane Torres, who went on Conan one day and did more to rehab the reputation of Guy Fieri than maybe any single person on this planet. An extremely-specific and somewhat dubious distinction to place on Shane's shoulders, you might think, but nevertheless... If you haven't watched it, watch it. If you have, watch it again. It'll ring even truer when you discover that the aforementioned Mayor of Flavortown recently launched a relief fund for restaurant workers hurt by the impact of COVID-19 (i.e. all restaurant workers). The fund has been alive for less than a week, has cleared $10 mil already, and is aiming at a $100 million goal. We know you're doing your part to help keep Portland eateries alive and well through deliveries and takeout orders, but if you think you've got the spare funds to kick down to Mr. Fieri's noble endeavor, please do so. And why not check out some old episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives while you're at it? It was a good show.
