The Birth of Wild Man

An author’s ride from misery to manuscript

Jeff Geiger

Once upon a time, and not all that terribly far back, Jeff Geiger was undergoing what he now describes as “a dark night of the soul.” The Eugene writer had arrived at the artistic crossroads. “I’d been working for, I’d say, at least a decade as what I’d consider to be a serious writer,” he says. Deciding that he was most passionate about young adult fiction, Geiger wrote two such novels that came up bust. They had heart, but “they weren’t selling. It was an incredibly frustrating experience,” he recalls. Continue reading 

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 

The Magic of Mythbusters

Chatting with Adam Savage about theater, making stuff and Star Wars

Adam Savage (left) and Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters

For more than a decade we’ve watched Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman blow things up in the name of science on their critically acclaimed TV series MythBusters, which will end next season. This weekend, audiences will have the chance to see these geeky heroes live onstage when “MythBusters: Jamie & Adam Unleashed” hits the Hult Center Dec. 12. EW caught up with Savage in the midst of his 32-city tour.   Continue reading 

Holidaze Wines

Traditionally, we use our December column to explore wine-related gifting for Christmas. This year, my wife — lovely Kat Chinn, a superb cook — asked, “Whatchagot for Kwanzaa and Hanukkah?” Ooops. She set off a firestorm of eye-opening research.   Kwanzaa 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 

Local Soccer Fans Find A Home Base

The Echo Squadron Gathers at Doc’s Pad

The Echo Squadron Gathers at Doc’s Pad to cheer the Timbers on. Photo credit: Killian Doherty.

Despite much wishful thinking since the U.S. hosted the 1994 World Cup, soccer fans remain marginalized in this country. Soccer rarely receives the attention and accommodation given to the three (or four) hegemonic sports in the U.S. — American football, basketball, baseball and ice hockey (what Andrei Markovits and Steven Hellerman refer to as the “big three and one-half”). 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