Posted inFood & Drink

Cocktailing: Slap Happy

There is never a void in cable television. You will find that be there ruinous fire, torrential flood, cataclysmic volcano, or category-five hurricane, you

There is never a void in cable television. You will find that be there ruinous fire, torrential flood, cataclysmic volcano, or category-five hurricane, you will still have access to 24-hour cable programming. Most of it tends to be awful as we have all watched at least an episode of something embarrassing, demoralizing and contemptible like The Swan where they found Michael Jackson’s plastic surgeon to turn 300-pound losers into cougar-ready material for Real Housewives of Orange County. Or My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé in which a schoolteacher pretended to marry a rude, loathsome, and slobby hippopotamus for a cash prize. Unfortunately, what I’ve just described is wretched and is aired at prime time, so you can only imagine what I watch when I finally have time to ignite the boob tube at 4 a.m. I flip between infomercials with Tattoo selling personal massagers, discount telephone psychics and Suzanne Sommers doing kegel exercises with what appears to be pool noodle. I flip through hundreds of channels in determination of finding something somewhat satisfying. While I hate to admit it, I always stop at the ShamWow guy.

Posted inCulture

Booted From Gardens, Moonscapes, and Lava Rock Love: Mick McMenaminuses takes the COBA Tour of Homes

Husband and wife team Guild and Gould went big in old town with a classically inspired super-du(per) plex.People don’t like home invasions. And those opening

Husband and wife team Guild and Gould went big in old town with a classically inspired super-du(per) plex.People don't like home invasions. And those opening their doors for
the famed COBA Tour of Homes annual event last weekend can now relax.
The streams of curious couples, bargain shoppers and transients like
myself have slunk back to our abodes, heads full of ideas yet wallets
still light
So when assigned to cover this event, I decided to
start where I live, Awbrey Butte, my chic locale for the past few
weeks. Mind you, I don't actually live on the Butte, rather in a '79
Ford RV named Harrietta Ambages, and the notion of "home" is a parking
space with shade, an electrical outlet and the occasional shower.
Stoking
Harrietta and rounding another street that goes nowhere but up. I
finally found a "High Desert Garden." The single-story home is standard
Bend but the garden is utter United Nations with each part echoing a
different country-Mexico, Greece, North Korea (an unfertile plot with a
single statue).
I didn't get the garden's builder/owner/seller's name because we were interrupted by, "Where's your ticket?"
"Ticket?"

Posted inOpinion

Crater Lake Faces Chopper Invasion

Fortunately, Leading Edge Aviation-the Bend company that wants to start offering helicopter tours above Crater Lake National Park-doesn’t propose buzzing the

The sound of a helicopter has never been described as soothing.
The noise output of a helicopter at a distance of 100 feet has been calculated
at 105 decibels-five decibels higher than a jackhammer. 

Fortunately, Leading Edge Aviation-the Bend company that wants to
start offering helicopter tours above Crater Lake National Park-doesn't propose
buzzing the lake at 100 feet; it says its choppers will fly no lower than 1,000
feet.

But the whumpa-whumpa-whumpa of churning rotor blades, whether at 100
feet or 1,000, is not a sound that belongs at Crater Lake, Oregon's only
national park and a place where people go to see natural beauty and experience
(relative) peace and quiet.

Even at 1,000 feet or more, as anybody who's heard one of the Air
Link helicopters zoom overhead can attest, the sound of a helicopter is
impossible to ignore. Travis Warthen, a vice president for Leading Edge, told
The Oregonian that an RV or (in winter) a snowmobile driving along the rim road
would be louder than one of his 650-hp Bell helicopters. Maybe so, but that
seems like a weak excuse to add another element to the noise mix.

Posted inOpinion

Driven to Distraction: Cambridge cops, Shaq snubbed at White House, Justice for Jacko and more!

“You boorish Paddy! Egress my domicile or shall I berate you further?” That’s my take on what Henry Louis Gates Jr. said to

The
author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as
America. He is reporting from a ditch outside your home, thanking streaming
video, you, Stu and the High Desert Animal Hospital that Season One is done, on
assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.

The Curious Case of the Professor and Police
"You boorish Paddy! Egress my domicile or shall I berate
you further?" That's my take on what Henry Louis Gates Jr. said to Cambridge
cops last week. First it was Jacko "dying" and now a Harvard professor getting
arrested for disorderly conduct (charges were dropped within two days).Which
African-American will Obama turn to next in order to distract us from the
health care boondoggle (which no longer includes the words "universal" or
"single-payer")? This curious case-the arrest and health care initiative-only
gets more interesting: The 911 tapes have been released, contradicting
arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley's report that caller Lucia Whalen
mentioned "black" men entering the house and that he spoke with her at the
scene. She didn't, on both counts. Sure Gates probably berated the officers
eloquently after being found in his own home with ID and, yes, Gates is an
insufferable intellectual who feigns interest in common folks' problems on PBS.
But he was the wrong guy to arrest.Boston is hardly a beacon of racial harmony,
pity the next non-Harvard professor found snooping around Cambridge. Makes you
really appreciate living in Central Oregon, don't it? Our cops are pretty cool,
and the only minorities to be found are obese people visiting from Houston. One
final note: To repair race relations, Obama has invited both Sgt. Crowley and
Professor Gates for beer at the White House. How they will laugh and laugh!

Posted inOpinion

Modern Day Slavery

The Reagan, Clinton and Bush regimes extinguished the rights of American workers to make a decent living by the imposition of policies that have resurrected

The Reagan, Clinton and Bush regimes extinguished the
rights of American workers to make a decent living by the imposition of
policies that have resurrected slavery by the outsourcing of most of the good
paying jobs here. Example: The American textile industry outsourced to Mexico
and $2-a-day workers.

Posted inOpinion

Modern Day Slavery

The Reagan, Clinton and Bush regimes extinguished the
rights of American workers to make a decent living by the imposition of
policies that have resurrected slavery by the outsourcing of most of the good
paying jobs here. Example: The American textile industry outsourced to Mexico
and $2-a-day workers.

Posted inOpinion

Downtowners Didn’t Get A Fair Shake

Editor's
Note: The article referenced in the following column was not an editorial, but
a recent opinion piece penned by Source
columnist Bruce Miller and represented his opinion, not those of the newspaper.
The Source  has not taken a
position about downtown loitering and panhandling. The Source has
and always will be a major supporter of local, independent businesses and a
vital downtown core.

What does The
Source have against downtown merchants?
I'm writing
in reaction to your latest negative editorial about downtown Bend merchants.
Recently, you derided our complaints about panhandlers downtown, now you've
done the same regarding our problems with "kids." Why are you even writing
about merchant complaints when you deem the complaints so unworthy? Could it be
because you feel you have to stand up for absolutely anything you call
"alternative," even when alternative means hurtful, disrespectful, threatening
or even criminal?

Posted inCulture

Sally Forced: The Ugly Truth is that an uptight heroine doesn’t make a romantic comedy

Ten bucks says they fall in love, but with hilarious consequences.Twenty years ago-almost to the day-American moviegoers were introduced to Sally Albright in Rob Reiner

Ten bucks says they fall in love, but with hilarious consequences.Twenty years ago-almost to the day-American moviegoers were introduced to Sally Albright in Rob Reiner and Nora Ephron's When Harry Met Sally. As played by Meg Ryan, she was a sunny but tightly-wound city girl who found a perfect foil in loosey-goosey misanthrope Harry Burns (Billy Crystal). Sally owed more than a little to Holly Hunter's Type-A, scheduled-crying-jag TV news producer Jane Craig in Broadcast News, but she became the standard bearer for a certain kind of romantic-comedy heroine, one we've already seen this summer in The Proposal: the sympathetic control freak.

The Ugly Truth arrives on this auspicious anniversary for the "rom-com" genre to remind us that it takes more than a list-maker with a pretty face to earn the "sympathetic" part of that character description. Katherine Heigl may be trying desperately to channel some Sally-and some Jane-into her performance, but that's not the same as giving an audience a reason to like her.
Heigl plays Abby Richter, whose occupation happens to be-watch out, Jane Craig!-a TV news producer. Overseeing a Sacramento morning show that's floundering in the ratings, she's also trying to find the perfect guy who will fit all the criteria on her checklist.

Posted inCulture

Could it Be Magic?: The Trouble with Harry Potter

Whaddaya call this sport again? Cribbage?British comedian Stewart Lee has a skit in response to the Harry Potter franchise. To quote: “People come up to

Whaddaya call this sport again? Cribbage?British comedian Stewart Lee has a skit in response to the Harry Potter franchise. To quote: "People come up to me and ask, 'Oh, did you read the new Harry Potter?' And I say, 'No I haven't read it, because I'm forty f***ing years-old, no, I did not read Harry Potter And The Tree Of NOTHING.'"

But point being, there is very little point to actually reviewing the latest Harry Potter movie. The franchise is a multi-billion dollar juggernaut, and the Hogwarts tales are so beloved across the world that the creators could probably turn out a shaky cell phone-made film of the cast drunkenly slurring through a script reading around a table at the Dog In The Pond pub in rural Sussex, with Daniel Radcliffe leaving for the bathroom half-way through not coming back, and it would still be a smash.
So, considering, it's fair that this multi-billion dollar juggernaut assumes that everyone has read the books, everyone has seen the movies and so proceeds to produce material based on this assumption. It sells. Well, this reviewer has not read the series, and has completely avoided anything more than a TV preview of the movies. Hell, this reviewer thought Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were a couple.

Posted inMusic

Fuel for the Roots

An all-star version of The Mostest rocking Bend Roots ’08.Before closing out an intensely jammy set with his band, The Mostest, at the Show Us

An all-star version of The Mostest rocking Bend Roots '08.Before closing out an intensely jammy set with his band, The Mostest, at the Show Us Your Spokes series at Parrilla Grill last Friday night, Mark Ransom took a moment to talk about the Bend Roots Revival, which is slated for September 25-26 at Parrilla and the Victorian Café. He was urging community members to support the festival and help them create a friendly relationship with the neighbors.

Also, he mentioned the fundraiser show on Thursday night to help raise money for the massive community music event that this year is expected to include as many as 55 total acts, in addition to workshops and other activities. Although a community event and project of KPOV, Ransom insists that every performer is paid, even if only a modest amount. With that in mind, Bend Roots - far and away the best local music event of the year - needs some cash, especially this year, when the harsh economy has prevented some contributors to cut back on donations.
"We try to get at least a little stipend to each artist. Even though it's a small amount, the artists and the [musical] community feel appreciated," says Ransom.

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