Mike Bookey

mike@tsweekly.com
Posted inFood & Drink

Man vs. Burger: Think you can tackle Sidelines' 6-pound sandwich challenge? Think again.

Sidelines Sports Bar and Grill offers a six-pound burger and this guy tried to eat all of it.
Mike Bookey

“I think I could do that.”
These are the words that began an otherwise normal 30-year-old man's trip down a road that ended with him attempting to eat a 6-pound burger. Actually, “6-pound burger” doesn't begin to describe something that contains six beef patties, six slices of bacon, 10 ounces of Black Forest ham, three fried eggs, six slices of cheese, grilled onions, tomatoes and lettuce. You could call it a sandwich, if you think sandwiches should be more than two feet tall, use grilled cheese sandwiches in place of buns and be named the Triple Bypass Challenge.
That's right, this item on the Sidelines Sports Bar and Grill menu is not a burger. It's a challenge and if you can eat it, along with a pound of french fries, in under an hour it's free. You're also rewarded with a T-shirt and a spot on the bar's Wall of Fame.
“No one could eat that,” I replied, but he persisted as we sat in a crowded Sidelines on a Sunday afternoon, he cheering on his beloved Denver Broncos and I providing a steady stream of smartass Tim Tebow jokes. But he didn't let it go… not that afternoon and not for the weeks that followed. He said he could pull this off and I started to believe him.

Posted inNews

Onward, Upward: Meet the unlikely face of Central Oregon's marriage equality movement

Bruce Morris is the unlikely face of Central Oregon’s marriage equality movement.
Mike Bookey

Author’s note: Since we published this story, Basic Rights Oregon announced that after a careful study, their board has voted unanimously to not place a measure on the 2012 ballot. You can read more about their decision and see a statement from the board right here.
Bruce Morris knows that he might be one of the least likely people to be advocating for same sex marriage. For one, he's straight. Also, he's married and, between him and his wife, has four grown children and he's a big, bearded dude. Still, he's the new executive director of the Human Dignity Coalition, a Bend-based organization that advocates for, among other things, equality for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals in the community.
Again, he's an unlikely warrior for gay rights and he knows this. It's a question he gets a lot and one that might elicit a laugh from the former lawyer who first came to Bend in the late 1990s.
“I get that a fair amount and, my response is that I have seen over the course of my life a lot of injustice. It bothered me tremendously and I decided at some point that I didn't want to continue working in a way that was enabling at least environmental injustice,” says Morris.
The “environmental injustice” he mentions refers to his time working as an attorney, primarily representing Texas oil refineries. With a law degree from Baylor and a master's of law from Columbia, Morris' legal career was in full swing while he was living in Austin, Texas, but the pull to work for social justice was nagging at him. When he and his wife moved to Oregon, he eventually made a career shift, working for Basic Rights Oregon, a statewide LGBT rights organization and, more recently, the Rural Organizing Project.

Posted inOutside

Any Band > Nickelback: Detroit Lions fans (and the rest of the sensible world) would rather not have this band ruin Thanksgiving

Entire nation displeased as Nickelback grabs Thanksgiving halftime show.
Mike Bookey

For the past 20-plus years, I've been watching the Detroit Lions play one game each year. And if you're a football fan, so have you. This historically bad – until very recently – squad gets (or is forced) to play on Thanksgiving Day on an annual basis. This is weird and some people don't support it, but I do. Leaving the Lions game off the Thanksgiving Day slate would be like deciding to eradicate gravy from your Turkey Day spread – completely unethical.
This year's Thanksgiving game is already in the news, and not because the contest will see the Lions taking on their division rival, the Green Bay Packers, but rather due to the fact that someone with a high level of authority apparently decided to drink some paint thinner and choose Nickelback as the halftime entertainment. A strong contingent of Lions fans are both embarrassed and outraged at this choice, and as of this printing, they'd gathered more than 47,000 signatures on a petition, which points out that the birthplace of Motown could better represent itself to the world by choosing essentially any other band. And do you think Ndamukong Suh approves of this? Hell no. He'll probably punch Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger in the nards.

Posted inMusic

Welcome Back: After four years, Scott Fisher releases another record and it was worth the wait

Northwest musician returns to music scene after four year hiatus.
Mike Bookey

Scott Fisher has just sent me an email, like he said he would in the half-hour interview we'd had over the phone the previous day. We talked mostly about his new EP, Sunnyslope Ave., but the two songs he's sent in this message have nothing to do with that. Rather, he wants me to listen to a charming bossa nova cut with French lyrics and a sludgy post-grunge song.
Why has this former stalwart of the Portland music scene (now living and working in L.A.) sent me music so far from the ambient indie pop found on his new album? Fisher is, you see, trying to show me what he's been doing in the four years since we last spoke, mostly because I keep asking why the hell he's taken so long to follow up 2007's excellent Step into the Future. The two songs are samples of the songwriting and producing he's been doing for television shows. That bossa nova thing? It could be heard in an episode of Brothers and Sisters and was also featured in a film. And the grungy rock cut was featured, as Fisher puts it, in “a vampire show”… of course.

Posted inCulture

A Collector of Stories: The Nature of Words brings Augusten Burroughs to share his memoir-writing skills

Running With Scissors author to share insights at Bend’s Nature of Words festival.
Mike Bookey

Augusten Burroughs isn't a professor of English. And he doesn't have a master's in creative writing, or even a bachelor's degree. In fact, his formal education ended in grade school. Still, the 46-year-old author of one of the most acclaimed memoirs in recent memory, Running With Scissors, is a hell of a writing teacher, even if he did teach himself the craft.
And that's what he'll be doing this week in Bend at The Nature of Words literary festival where he's leading two workshops and also giving the keynote address at the event's author dinner. He's excited for the workshops, but doesn't seem to care too much for the standard author presentation speech, opting rather to inspire aspiring writers with a Q and A approach to most of his appearances.
“The last thing I want to do is stand up there and talk about myself. A lot of people, whether they're writers or whether they dream about being a writer, they might find themselves intimidated by writing. They try to write with a big fat capital W. I try to make it a lower case W,” says Burroughs.

Posted inOutside

Back on the Hunt: Some pointers for Kim Kardashian's next try at landing a pro athlete husband

Despite Kim Kardashian’s most recent divorce, there are still plenty of eligible jock bachelors.
Mike Bookey

There's a chance you're unable to read this. It's quite likely that your vision has been obscured by tears, your belief in love shattered and your ability to even crawl out of bed suspended by a deep depression upon learning this week that Kim Kardashian filed for divorce from her husband, NBA star Kris Humphries, to whom she was wed for a mere 72 days.
If you can make out these words, brave soul, fear not. Kim will be back in search of another professional athlete to play the role of her “boyfriend” or “husband” in the myriad of brain-cell-canceling television programs her family occupies. After all, she and Humphries, who is supposed to be a forward for the NBA's New Jersey Nets, but isn't doing much besides getting dumped these days, received a reported $18 million in cash and in-kind compensation for getting married. She'd be silly not to do this again.

Posted inCulture

Need a Timely Costume?: Four free last-minute, conversation-starting Halloween ideas

A ghoulish guide for the upcoming holiday.
Mike Bookey

A One-Percenter
Remember when the point of Halloween was to dress up as something scary? People don't do that anymore, opting more for a humorous and/or slutty approach to their costuming. But you can dress as the ultimate boogeyman this year by gearing up as one of these “one percenters” we keep hearing about. You'll need a top hat, a tuxedo (or evening gown for the women) and a monocle. It would be good to have a few hundred-dollar bills (fake cash is fine, if you must) poking out of your pockets and a nametag that says, “We are the one percent.” A cigar or one of those fancy long cigarette things would also be a nice touch. If you want to get really in-your-face, accessorize with a pig nose. Just hope you don't run into an actual one percenter during your evening out. (Chances of that happening are, statistically speaking, one in one hundred).
Gus Fring aka the bad guy on Breaking Bad
A couple weeks ago, our television columnist, Wm.™ Steven Humphrey, posted on the Bent blog about a company that was selling masks of Breaking Bad drug lord Gustavo Fring that feature half of the dude's face blown off. If you can secure one of these masks, you'll quickly meet all the people at the party who enjoy this amazing television show. For those who don't get it, just say you're the Terminator. So, it's kind of two costumes in one.

Posted inFood & Drink

Little Bites: A Fall Feast: My night at the Deschutes Brewery fresh-hop dinner

Mike Bookey discovers you can pair great beer with great food at the Deschutes Brewery Mountain Room.
Mike Bookey

We've been writing a lot about fresh-hop beers lately, if you haven't noticed. There is good reason, though. I, along with the rest of our editorial department, love the crispy, tangy, spicy taste of a good fresh-hop beer.
And there were plenty of those to be had last Saturday at Deschutes Brewery's fresh-hop dinner at the Mountain Room. The tapas-style dinner featured an around-the-world approach with a full slate of delectable dishes, each paired with a different beer. While most of the beers were indeed made from fresh hops, there were a few exceptions, including the Abyss, which was the surprise offering of the night. I didn't hear many complaints from the sold-out room about that move, though, as it went perfectly with the caramel apple and walnut pastries that were served for dessert.

Posted inOutside

I Don’t Like Tim Tebow: But every sports columnist sure does

Tim Tebow has been showered with praise, but he’s not the saint of the NFL.
Mike Bookey

No, I have never met Tim Tebow. By all accounts he seems like a perfectly pleasant young man with a perfectly American haircut and first name. But I don't like him as a football player. Not when he was charging down the field for Florida. Not when he won the damn Heisman Trophy. Not when he talked about Jesus all the time and not when he came into the NFL. And certainly not this week when damn near every sports columnist all but demanded I accept him as football royalty.
In fact, this summer when there were rumors that Tebow had fallen as far as four on the Bronco's depth chart, I felt a sort of validation. See, I told myself, I knew this guy was all hype. I knew he wouldn't last in the NFL and that Heisman was just a reward for being the quarterback of the SEC champion, which is essentially what the Heisman Trophy has become. I figured people would give up on him. Success, I thought.
But then – and maybe it was a reward for all the free PR work he did for the big guy – Tebow somehow found himself getting some snaps over the course of the past two weeks. And it wasn't because he's clearly better than Kyle Orton or Brady Quinn, but rather because he sold a lot of jerseys and those oxygen-deprived Denveranians took to moronically chanting “Tee-bow, Tee-bow” after each of Orton's incomplete passes.

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