Mike Bookey

mike@tsweekly.com
Posted inOutside

Superman at Rest: My favorite Shaquille O'Neal moments on the occasion of his retirement

Mike Bookey

On Friday, Shaquille O'Neal plopped the massive collection of muscle that is his body in front of a webcam and told his fans that this past season, his 19th campaign and one that was pocked with injuries, would be his last. The friendly giant has been an institution in pro basketball – for a few years my mother worked out in a Shaq shirt she got in a box of Cheerios, if that's any indication of his popularity – since he began tearing down hoops for shits and giggles during the Clinton administration. But he was more than a basketball player, as those who own a rare VHS copy of the “hit” 1996 film Kazaam know quite well. Here are my favorite Shaq moments of all time.
The Skinny Shaq: The year was 1990 and a lanky man-child named Shaquille O'Neal put on some shorty LSU shorts and began blocking any shot that came near the basket. He once blocked 12 shots against Loyola Marymount in a game that freshman season (he did allow Hank Gathers to score 48 points in the same contest, but whatevs) and did it as a slender, sexy young man. Soon, he began eating.

Posted inMusic

An Ocean Between: Erin Cole-Baker's new record investigates life as an American New Zealander

Erin Cole-Baker addresses her struggles as an American New Zealander in her new album, Big Sky.
Mike Bookey

Plenty of musicians struggle with identity and write songs about how they're trying to find themselves. Some do this well and other times it seems contrived, but on Erin Cole-Baker's new album, Big Sky, we find an artist addressing a fundamental question she's dealt with for most of her life.

Posted inNews

Play a Mean Pinball: Hitting the Flippers Around Central Oregon

For the love of pinball machines!
Mike Bookey

It's a perfectly nice day outside, one of the first in a long while. People are passing by on bikes. They're drinking on patios and wearing bright colors and stylish sunglasses.
So it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense that I'm in the back of a dark bar swearing at a pinball machine. I've invested a couple dollars into this device, which happens to be promoting the popular television program, CSI (which I've never seen), and I feel a few more bucks worth of quarters burning a hole in my pocket. This is my fifth pinball stop of the day and even as my wrists become a bit sore and my pint glass again empty, I can't find a good stopping point. I think – as I've thought at other places during my week of intense pinball immersion – that I've got this thing figured out. But I don't. Not at all. And once again, I see the ball rolling down the middle of the table, splitting the difference between the two flippers and creating an all-too-familiar clunk as it lands in the mechanical mystery zone that is the inside of a pinball machine. Nevertheless, I drop another three quarters in because obsession is a real son of a bitch.

Posted inOutside

The Void: I went four days without sports and now I'm lost

Willingly giving up a holiday weekend filled with sports for a music festival where athletic ability is measured by extended head banging.
Mike Bookey

Last weekend, rather than absorb my typical diet of basketball from my couch or baseball atop a barstool (where I would have almost certainly found myself engaged in an argument with a stranger over the obvious benefits of the designated hitter), I went to a music festival for four entire days of rock and/or roll music, but absolutely zero sports.
You're probably thinking to yourself right now, “Jeez, this damn guy gets to go to the internationally known Sasquatch Festival and now he's bitching about having missed out on sports? Puh-leese.

Posted inOutside

The Power of Nowitzki: What do you expect from a guy named Dirk?

Anybody seen that new Thor movie? Yeah, neither have I. But from the previews, I've gleaned one thing and that's the fact that Thor looks and probably acts almost exactly like Dirk Nowitzki.
Mike Bookey

Anybody seen that new Thor movie? Yeah, neither have I.
But from the previews, I've gleaned one thing and that's the fact that Thor looks and probably acts almost exactly like Dirk Nowitzki. And judging from the way the lanky German is dominating the Thunder in the Western Conference Finals, maybe he is some sort of demigod. Right, I know, Thor is from the Norse tradition and Dirk is German, but wasn't Thor the god (or part god or whatever) of thunder? If that's the case, chalk a point up for Dirk, would ya pal, because he's definitely in charge of the Thunder right now.
And if you're slamming down your horn-adorned helmet and angrily stroking your massive blond and/or red beard at the effrontery that is my lack of Norse mythological knowledge, I'm sorry. But shouldn't you really be in line to see Thor again instead of reading this stupid sports column? Thor never reads sports columns, but you'd know that because you're an expert, right?

Posted inCulture

Creativity United: Arts Central brings the region's art groups together with the Cultural Advocacy Partnership

Sure, this region might be better known for its mountains and recreational opportunities, but there has for some time also been a strong contingent of art and culture to be found in Central Oregon.
Mike Bookey

Sure, this region might be better known for its mountains and recreational opportunities, but there has for some time also been a strong contingent of art and culture to be found in Central Oregon. Now, the scores of artistic and cultural groups in the area will have a louder voice and a bevy of other resources thanks to a new collaborative group developed by Arts Central, our regional cultural council.
The Cultural Advocacy Partnership (CAP) was announced at an Arts Central event last week and presently includes 20 member groups (all of which pay a $100 annual membership fee). It includes some well-known nonprofit and for-profit cultural institutions like BendFilm, the Les Schwab Amphitheater and the Tower Theatre Foundation, but is hoping to bring even more groups into the fold as it progresses. According to Arts Central Executive Director Cate O'Hagan, CAP will allow different cultural groups to work together to enhance the area's reputation as a place for culture while also helping fund the member groups. Essentially, the partnership aims to increase the community's interest in the arts, making them once again a priority. This can be done, she says, through collaboration.

Posted inOutside

Fore! Play? This is why I don't play golf, OK?

I almost died on a golf course. Twice.
Mike Bookey

One time, I took a golf ball to the neck. True story. I wish I could say that the ball was merely bouncing along the cart path and caromed harmlessly my way, nicking the top of my back. But no. This was a 125-yard shank job that nearly knocked me from my perch atop the diesel-powered industrial lawn mower on which I spent most of the summer of 2002. Son of a bitch hit me square in the side of the neck, an inch below my ear, almost prematurely ending my career in golf course maintenance.
I brought the mower to a halt and turned to see in the distance, at an adjacent hole, a sunburned man in a Hawaiian shirt giving me a half-assed and seemingly apologetic wave. I leapt from the mower, picked up the offending golf ball and hurled it toward my assailant. It fell a good 75 yards short, so I also chucked my neon hard hat – the design flaw of which turned out to be its lack of neck coverage – for extra effect, before realizing that my neck was slowly swelling to a near-immobile state. That bastard stood there with his hands on his hips, shaking his head disapprovingly at the behavior of the minimum-wage employee he almost erased from the face of the earth.

Posted inCulture

Oregon's Finest: Shot in Harney County, Meek's Cutoff might be one of the year's best dramas

There were plenty of films that made an impact on me during last year's BendFilm festival, but none stuck with me like Meek's Cutoff.
Mike Bookey

There were plenty of films that made an impact on me during last year's BendFilm festival, but none stuck with me like Meek's Cutoff. The film, about a group of families heading dangerously off course thanks to a big-talking guide in the early days of the Oregon Trail, has finally made it to wide release after a successful festival tour.
In fact, when Meek's Cutoff screened at BendFilm, it was one of the first showings of the film. Still, by the film's end, it was tough to say that this film, directed by Portland's Kelly Reichardt (who also brought us the touching Wendy and Lucy), wasn't going to make some waves. Sure, it's incredibly quaint and quiet with little stylistic flare, but that's the beauty of it. Reichardt, with a great script from Jonathan Raymond, allows the desolate eastern Oregon backdrop to serve as a blank canvas on which Michelle Williams (in one of her best roles since Brokeback Mountain), Paul Dano and the rest of the cast paint a picture of heartbreak, misery and mystery with their stunningly believable characters. Another nod goes to a grizzled Bruce Greenwood who played the film's eponymous and impossibly inept guide, eliciting plenty of frustration from both the other characters and ultimately, the audience.

Posted inMusic

As Weird as They Want to Be: With a new album, a louder sound and still no vocals, Empty Space Orchestra continues upward

Since forming in 2008, Empty Space Orchestra has transformed gradually from a spacey jazz-rock trio to a genre-mashing quartet and finally, into the five-piece heavy-as-hell psychedelic powerhouse we hear today.
Mike Bookey

Empty Space Orchestra has, over the course of a couple of years of regional touring, invented a game. It's called P.T. Cruiser, the rules of which are unexpectedly complicated and apparently quite rigid.
Here's how it works: The four members of the band not driving the tour van (safety first) are to keep a watchful eye out for P.T. Cruisers, which for the less-than-automotive savvy is Chrysler's decade-long-minivan-meets-old-timey-sports-car mistake. They're rare, but not too rare, because as the band is riding down the freeway to Portland, Seattle, Eugene or wherever that weekend's schedule is taking them, a member of the quintet will see one of these vehicles. He or she will then declare “P.T. Cruiser!” and then is allowed to slap a band mate of their choosing in the face. It sounds like a classic game of “slug-bug,” but this has the potential to get more violent, and easily more hilarious, because if someone sees a Smart car, they're free to punch one of their fellow musicians.

Posted inNews

Heroes on the Outside: As local homeless-vet numbers rise, one grassroots group responds

With more veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, the number of homeless vets is on the rise both locally and nationally.
Mike Bookey

It feels like we're deep in the woods, but we're not. We're actually within city limits, following a pickup truck loaded heavily with outdoor supplies, sack lunches and barrels of water. Soon, clusters of tents and hastily constructed shacks come into view. We stop, and the pickup comes to a stop next to a pair of tents and a pile of half-filled water bottles, lanterns, a shopping cart and countless other items.
Two men approach from behind a berm. This is their camp and they immediately recognize the men from the pickup truck, Jim Montoya, Craig Cass and Steve Martin, volunteers from the Central Oregon Veteran's Outreach (COVO), a group that provides assistance to the area's military veterans, specializing in homeless outreach. They know these men – both of whom are veterans – and there's an immediate and visible bond between these volunteers and the two men camping here.

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