Whats-Happening: Page 667

In Search of an Irish Cocktail

With St. Paddy’s Day around the corner, Mr. Kennedy seeks to expand his libatious horizons

Drink

A guy named Kennedy walks into a bar two weeks before St. Patrick’s Day. That sounds like the start of a bad joke, and sometimes it is. Kennedy: a quintessentially Irish name. St. Paddy’s Day: America’s most Irish of holidays. Commemorating the Patron Saint of Ireland, St. Paddy’s has lost its religious meaning, particularly in the U.S., becoming instead an excuse to eat a lot, drink more and toast all things Eire.  Continue reading →

Prohibition-era Booze is the Cat’s Pajamas

Forget bathtub gin, local options put a modern spin on ’20s drinking culture

Drink

There are many bars and nightclubs where the ambiance and the pours can send us back a few decades in a woozy, boozy time travel machine — think ’80s night at John Henry’s — but the increased popularity of some cocktails take a century-deep plunge. Distilleries such as 4 Spirits Distillery in Corvallis have put a twist on alcohol and inspired bars to serve drinks from the Prohibition era of the ’20s and ’30s. Perhaps banning booze paves the road to revelation — these cocktails are the rage once more. Continue reading →

The Fight for the Modern Family

Film

Filmmaker Peter Wang’s In the Family came to him in a mental flash. “I had a glimpse of this family, the family at the center of the movie — two dads playing soccer with their kids,” Wang tells EW. It seems simple; a fleeting spark that captures the imagination, but Wang’s feature-length directorial debut tackles some complex issues — death, same-sex partnership in the South, guardianship, a custody battle — and it does so with unconventional filmmaking.  Continue reading →

One More Shot of Whiskey

Music

The emotional barometer of bluegrass registers somewhere between hilarity and sorrow, like a hee-haw hiccup after an epic night of breakup drinking. Bluegrass laughs at funerals and cries at birthdays. Likely the antic mood of bluegrass, part comedy and part tragedy, derives from all that steamy choo-choo chugging on the snare and washboard, the hard, syncopated strumming of the strings and the mournful Appalachian moon-calls that scratch harmonic tattoos into the clouds. Continue reading →

You, Me and Umphrey’s McGee

Music

If your band has been around for 15 years and you have released almost 20 albums and live DVDs combined, then you are definitely doing something right. Andy Farag — the percussionist for the popular progressive rock band Umphrey’s McGee — understands the secret to the band’s longevity. Continue reading →

Opera: Not Dead

Music

A few years ago, the Eugene Opera seemed moribund — a “dead man walking,” to use the phrase applied in prison to an inmate condemned to death. But in the past couple of years, it’s gotten a reprieve — or rather engineered a resurrection. Continue reading →

Faraway Fishtank

Music

Fishtank Ensemble’s lead singer Ursula Knudson likes to play music at the edge of the world, whether that’s breaking out her violin in the rural pockets of Maine or twangin’ on her hand saw at the tip of the heel of the boot of Italy. “I had this epiphany,” Knudson tells EW of playing in faraway and obscure places. “How much I love doing that more than playing in big cities.” She adds, “We’ve brought music to every nook and cranny, which I think is important to do.” Continue reading →

A night of spuds and  schtick at Tsunami

Theater

The Actors’ Table of Eugene (T.A.T.E.) is showcasing some of the best comedy for women … and potatoes. This installment of Eugene’s eclectic readers’ theater will feature some sort of spud in every offering. Local actresses will read from their favorite comic pieces, and so long as there’s a potato involved, it’s no-holds-barred on the material. Continue reading →

She’s Got You

Actors Cabaret would like to introduce you to Patsy Cline

Theater

“There’s just no one who can touch her. Hell, I hang on every line,” Jimmy Buffet once sang of Patsy Cline. She is so much more than the first female country singer to headline her own tour, to perform at Carnegie Hall and to truly break down barriers of gender in country music. She is more than a tragic legend of young talent, villainous prompters and a cheating husband. She is a voice so strong and soulful you begin to wonder why you ever bothered listening to anyone else try to sing. Continue reading →

Science vs. Religion

How the World Began explores the Earth’s origins in rural Kansas

Theater

When you inherit the wind, hold onto your hat: You never know where you might end up. Or do you? I’m speaking, of course, about the 1955 play Inherit the Wind, written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee and dramatizing the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, which pitted prosecutor William Jennings Bryan against defense attorney Clarence Darrow in a Tennessee court case that questioned whether evolution could be taught in public schools up against the supreme word of God. Continue reading →