Self-Published Round Up

Every once in a while something crazy happens: Someone self-publishes a book and it takes off. The Celestine Prophecy started that way as did Still Alice, and 50 Shades of Grey started off as internet-published Twilight fan fiction. Lane County has a whole host of writers publishing themselves or getting published by a “vanity” press (Hey, it’s not vanity if it’s good!). They, and we, hope one of these books takes off. Here’s just a smidge of what got dropped off at EW this year. Continue reading 

Winter Reading Top Ten

  J. Michaels Staff Picks 160 East Broadway # A (541) 342-2002   Of local interest is Megan Kruse’s Call Me Home. Oregon writer, an uncommonly powerful debut novel. Also in fiction, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Astonishing, challenging, upsetting and profoundly moving. Continue reading 

Here’s the Church, Here’s the Steeple

Spotlight is a brilliant piece of meta-storytelling: a film that tells a story about how another story was found. In early 2002, the The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published a story uncovering years of hidden abuse by Catholic priests. That piece is out there, online, for anyone to read. But what director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) and his co-writer Josh Singer tease out, in a movie that plays like a quiet, tense thriller, is how that story came to be — and how it took decades to come to light.  Continue reading 

Punk Western

Jenny Don’t and The Spurs

Jenny Don’t and The Spurs

For all the fringe, Western flair and Loretta-Lynn inflection, Jenny Don’t — of Jenny Don’t and The Spurs — is a punk rocker at heart.  “No matter how hard we try, we can’t disguise ourselves,” she tells EW over the phone from her Portland home. The same goes for her backing band The Spurs, comprised of Wipers drummer Sam Henry, Pierced Arrows bassist Kelly Halliburton and Adios Amigos guitarist JT Halmfilst.  Continue reading 

Taco Sallie

Tacocat to the ever-evolving punk-rock soul of Portland’s Sallie Ford.

Tacocat

Friday at Hi-Fi Music Hall will showcase a fantastic fuzzy spectrum of garage rock, from the surf pop of Seattle’s Tacocat to the ever-evolving punk-rock soul of Portland’s Sallie Ford. “We wanted to play a bunch of our news songs,” Tacocat’s Emily Nokes (vocals) tells EW on speakerphone from a van barreling toward Arizona. She’s referring to Tacocat joining Sallie Ford for this mini Western tour.  Continue reading 

Attempting to Dress

The Very Little Theatre bares all with Love, Loss and What I Wore

Jodi Altendorf In Love, Loss And What I Wore

You just want a bra. You want to get in, buy a bra and get on with your life. But the next thing you know you’re shoved into some tiny space halfway between a broom closet and a dressing room with a powerfully strong older lady. Aggressively this woman bends you over and pulls you up and actually, physically pushes your breasts around with her hands, then calls the other women in the shop over to have a look. You have lost all dignity. But you have found a really great-fitting bra. Continue reading 

Clickbait

Portland nerd-folk duo The Doubleclicks

The Doubleclicks

Angela Webber, one-half of Portland nerd-folk duo The Doubleclicks, says we’re living in a golden age of geek culture. “The creation of the internet definitely helped nerds find each other,” Webber tells EW. “If you’re the only person at your high school who loves Doctor Who,” Webber says, “you can find a robust community on the internet that shares that with you.”  Continue reading 

Bid adieu to 2015 and ring in 2016 with dance!

Who's who and what’s what in dance this month

Ballet Fantastique’s Hannah Bontrager and Fabio Simoes in An American Christmas Carol. Photo by Stephanie Urso.

Bid adieu to 2015 and ring in 2016 with dance!  The Eugene Youth Ballet tours the town with The Nutcracker 4 pm Thursday, Dec. 3, at Springfield Public Library, 10:15 am Friday, Dec. 4 at the Sheldon Branch of the Eugene Public Library and 2:45 pm Saturday, Dec. 5, at the Waldorf School. The final performances will be at 4 and 5 pm Wednesday, Dec. 9, at the downtown Eugene Public Library, 7:30 pm Thursday, Dec. 10, at Elmira High School and finally 10:15 am Friday, Dec. 11, at the Bethel Branch of the Eugene Public Library; FREE.   Continue reading 

Suffer the Children

Recipe for an emotional pummeling: A mother and her 5-year-old son are locked up in a dank shed, held hostage by an evil piece of white shit who makes routine visits for creaky sex acts while the kid counts time, faking sleep in a tiny closet. Mom was abducted seven years ago, which means that the tight walls of “room” are all the child knows, all he comprehends of the world: his universe is a sink, bed, tub, table, television and the shed’s single skylight revealing endless blue nothingness. Continue reading