Kamikaze Smackdown
Hot Mama's Wings hosted its Kamikaze Smackdown last night, and it was a spicy competition, complete with basket upon basket of hot wings. Chris Besio (below) won, eating 23 wings in 11.5 minutes. Congrats, Chris! Continue reading
Whats-Happening: Page 581
Family Fishing Day is Sunday
This press release just came in from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife regarding a Eugene event next Sunday: Families interested in spending an enjoyable day outdoors with a fishing pole in their hands may want to put the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Family Fishing Event at Alton Baker Canoe Canal on their calendar for 9:30 am to 1:30 pm Sunday, May 4. Continue reading
Art: Mugshots and Pack Rats
Touchy-Feely Cinema
This year, Cinema Pacific packs quite an international punch, with a focus on films from Chile and Taiwan and a slew of interactive events, EW spoke to Festival Director Richard Herskowitz to find out what not to miss. Here are some of the highlights: Chile’s Crackerjack Playwright Continue reading
Hard-Up Hemingway
Remember when Jude Law was pretty? Go back and watch Existenz, or A.I. or Gattaca, when he was often blonde and proper, and always a little bit cold. Then watch Dom Hemingway, in which he is, in so many ways, the opposite: earthy and sweaty and living it up. His hair sweeps back from a sharply pointed hairline, dyed dark brown and never clean; he’s carrying just enough extra weight (by movie-star standards) that his clothes bunch and puff in the wrong places, like real-person clothes. Continue reading
Jump Start Your Garden
Garden Starters helps people get out and grow
“Until last August, this was disused horse pasture.” Forest Weaver, Sean Ferrigno and I are standing at one end of a rectangular field. It’s mostly rough grass, but snaking mounds of soil wind over the mid-section, ready for planting. One is already planted with blueberries, and nearby are grape vines and some young fruit trees. Continue reading
American Musical Tapestries
From folk to jazz, Eugene bursts with the best American sounds
American “classical” music often finds a more welcome reception in choral concerts than in orchestra halls. Maybe it has something to do with the enormous popularity of choral music; nearly 30 million Americans — a tenth of the population — sing at least occasionally in a choir of some kind, whether it’s in school or church, amateur or professional. Maybe that’s why American folk and choral music sometimes seem like kissing cousins. Continue reading
Follow the Light
Lynx reminds me of a general — marshaling her beats, strings, digital bleeps and waves like orchestrated forces to create a united front. Or perhaps a captain is more apt. Her latest album, Light Up Your Lantern, sways like a ship in unknown waters on tracks like “Southern Skies,” leaving the listener a little woozy but eager for what lays ahead. Either way, Lynx is master and commander of her own fate, plotting her own folktronica course somewhere between the chilled mystery of The xx and the electronic exotica of Beats Antique. Continue reading
Swamp Meet in the City
Portland’s own Hillstomp has found a way to blend Northwestern sense of place with the sludge and balm of a Louisiana swamp. The duo’s new album, titled Portland, Ore., out now on Fluff & Gravy Records, is a 10-track work that ebbs and flows, jives and stomps and howls, riots and then takes a nap. It begins with a rather heavy twosome — “Santa Fe Line” and “Life I Want” — that showcases the band’s ever-growing ability to find beauty in mosquito-bitten disarray. Continue reading
Bubbly Bombadil
Bombadil’s quirky 2013 release Metrics of Affection defies expectations from the start — sounding more like British Invasion pop from the ’60s than contemporary indie rock from North Carolina. Album tracks “Angeline” and “Learning to Let Go” recall the Ray and Dave Davies songwriting partnership of The Kinks. “We do sound very Brit-pop,” bassist Daniel Michalak says. “When we started we wanted to sound like Neil Young. Now we want to sound like Jay-Z and The Offspring,” he jokes. Continue reading