Whats-Happening: Page 473

Do You Know the Coffin Man?

Landscaper Eric Kissell supplements his income selling handmade caskets

Culture
Eric Kissell

Late October, three years ago, Eric Kissell built his daughter a coffin.  Money’s always tight, so he used some distressed cedar planks pitted with holes bored by carpenter ants and wood beetles. Then he filled the casket with cold beers and added some dry ice for a spooky fog effect. “You can fit a lot of beer in a full-sized coffin,” Kissell says.  His daughter was thrilled. Guests at her Halloween party went nuts over Kissell’s macabre beer cooler. Shoot, he thought. Maybe I’m onto something here. Continue reading →

Local Haunt

Merlin’s Bar in Lebanon is full of ghosts and everyone knows it

Culture
Mike Groff sees dead people

Terry Kennon isn’t on the clock, but she’s at work anyway — because why not. What the hell else is there to do Wednesday night in Lebanon? She hops down from her barstool, walks outside and lights a cigarette under a sign that reads Merlin’s Bar and Grill. “I’ve worked here forever,” Kennon says, matter-of-factly. “Don’t tell me this place isn’t haunted.” Continue reading →

Eugene Ballet Company presents The Sleeping Beauty

Dance
Jennifer Martin and Yoshie Oshima in The Sleeping Beauty

Eugene Ballet Company presents the timeless tale of The Sleeping Beauty, considered one of the greatest ballets of all time. The story of Princess Aurora is one made famous both by the Brothers Grimm’s “Little Briar Rose” and, of course, Disney’s animated feature film. However, the story of true love’s kiss first came to be told through dance. Eugene Ballet Co. Continue reading →

Irish Invasion

Riverdance returns to Eugene for its 20th anniversary tour

Dance

Since bursting onto the scene in 1995, Riverdance has employed more than 2,000 dancers and performed more than 11,000 shows before 25 million people in 467 venues across 46 countries. But who’s counting?  In advance of the show’s return to the Hult Oct. 28-29, we caught up with senior executive producer, Irishman Julian Erskine, who’s been with Riverdance since the beginning.   Continue reading →

Let There Be Blood

Film

Dear Guillermo del Toro: Qué pasó? Did someone hijack your latest movie, Crimson Peak, and simply keep your name on the writing and directing credits? I smell a rat. Maybe Tony Scott? No, sorry, he’s dead. Please tell me it wasn’t Michael Bay. Anybody but Michael Bay. Continue reading →

Shadows of Post-Punk

Shadow Age

Music
Shadow Age

Silaluk, the debut full-length album from Richmond, Virginia post-punk revivalists Shadow Age, is out now on 6131 Records. The album is garnering critical acclaim among a movement of new bands revisiting the classic post-punk sound.  “Musically I was really inspired by most of the older UK post-punk bands from the early ’80s,” vocalist and guitarist Aaron Tyree says. “Like The Chameleons, The Cure, Death Cult, Danse Society.”  Continue reading →

The Future of the Internet

If you want to be great you have to get in front of as many people as possible and be confident yet vulnerable

Music
The Internet

Critically acclaimed soul and R&B act The Internet features Syd the Kyd (Sydney Bennet) and Matt Martia, alumni of controversial and groundbreaking hip-hop collective Odd Future.  The Internet’s 2015 release Ego Death is out now on Odd Future’s record label. The record frequently gets lumped in with an avant-garde or alternative soul scene alongside artists like Janelle Monáe. In fact, Monáe makes a guest appearance on Ego Death’s “Gabby.”  Continue reading →

Indie Honesty

Horse Feathers

Music
Horse Feathers

After 10 years of indie Americana marked by the slow-burning sound of violin, cello, guitar and melancholic vocals, Justin Ringle, frontman for Horse Feathers, thought he was finished with sad songs, and therefore done with his career. He didn’t pick up his guitar for months.  But instead of finality, Ringle chose revision, replacing strings with drums on the band’s recent album, So It Is with Us, and, in that pivot, encouraging fans to want what they want for themselves: more joy and more fun. Continue reading →

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Haunting sounds from the Eugene Opera, the UO School of Music and Dance, Vox Resonat and more

Music
Vox Resonat

If you had to pick a perfect opera for Halloween, Benjamin Britten’s 1954 The Turn of the Screw might be it. There’s definitely a haunted house, but in librettist Myfanwy Piper’s adaptation, as in Henry James’s 1898 novella, mastery lies in mystery. What really happened at scary Bly House? Ghosts? A more mundane human-perpetrated evil? Mere insanity?  Continue reading →