Mike Bookey

mike@tsweekly.com
Posted inMusic

What Guy? Oh, That 1 Guy: Mike Silverman and the tale of the Magic Pipe

Mike Bookey

One hell of a magic pipe.Mike Silverman has an odd sense of humor.

"I came up with the name in 1994. It was a joke or a dare, and it just
stuck. It still makes me laugh. It kinda shaped the direction of my
whole career," Silverman says of his onstage moniker, That 1 Guy.

Silverman is an irreverent wordsmith, creating seemingly nonsensical
songs that blend spoken word styling with funky/heavy metal bass lines.
Imagine Shel Silverstein hanging out with Primus and Parliment and
discussing, among other things, cheese and weasels. Now imagine that
bass line coming from a crazy-looking piece of roundabout art. The
one-man band has been a traveling sideshow oddity for upwards of ten
years now, and is making an appearance at the Silver Moon on February
12.

The Magic Pipe, as his instrument is so lovingly referred to, was hand
built by Silverman himself and is part bass, part sampler, and all
unbelievable.

Posted inCulture

Neighborhood Blotch: Misery in the ‘burbs gets yet another take

Mike Bookey

DiCaprio returns for another season of mad men. It's been ten years since Kevin Spacey got his head blown off in
American Beauty, and director Sam Mendes still has a lot more to say
about living inside the box. And while he doesn't cover much new
territory here, at least he hasn't lost his melancholy spirit.

Revolutionary
Road, Mendes' latest take on how rough it can be when carpet swatches
and cul-de-sacs run your life, stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet
as Frank and April Wheeler, a married couple living in a nondescript
suburb outside of New York City in the mid 1950s. The film opens with a
high-angle night shot and a '40s-era ballad cutting through the
soundtrack. I only remember this mundane detail because that also
describes the opening scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Point being,
both are essentially prison movies.

Posted inCulture

Championship Bout: Rourke gives his performance the ultimate fight

Mike Bookey

Has anyone seen my stapler?Part of the draw for The Wrestler is how close the storyline tracks
Rourke's real life rollercoaster. After his rise to fame in the '80s,
followed by his boxing stint and subsequent weird-guy tabloid filler,
Mickey had been reduced to bad movies and bit parts. There are a few in
which he truly shined, such as Marv in Sin City, and stunning
performances in The Pledge, Spin, Animal Factory and Get Carter. In The
Wrestler he finally puts all his cards on the table, hanging himself
out like a skinned deer for us to gawk at. It's the proverbial car
wreck and we're unable to avert our eyes.

The plot of The Wrestler is
nothing new. It follows a familiar comeback formula, but it shines by
turning convention on its head. We shudder at the thought of Rourke's
battered character Randy "The Ram" Robinson stepping in the ring again
for a few wrinkled dollar bills and nearly cheer when he contemplates
retirement. But the gritty realism, honest performances and tight
storytelling drive this moving character study. We know Randy's time
has come and gone, but he doesn't. The parallels to Rourke begin
immediately - physically battered, broken down, beat up, empty and
drained, he still clings to some kind of hope for redemption, or at
least another shot.

Posted inFood & Drink

Baja Sur Taco Tour: Dollar tacos south of the border

Mike Bookey

Editor’s note: There is a long tradition of Bendites sneaking south to
Baja California to escape the long Central Oregon winters. With that in
mind, we asked one of our dining correspondents to give us her
impressions of the beach side culinary scene during a recent trip.
On the Baja taco tour.Fish
tacos and Baja California are synonymous. Right? I found out on a
recent trip to Baja that ordering a little turf with your surf is a
good idea too. Sure, the fish is fresh and lovely. Coming from Bend in
the wintertime, I thought I would eat fish tacos every day of my
vacation. But my quest for fish tacos turned into a delectably edible
educational experience involving both tacos del mar y de la tierra.
On
our first night in San Jose del Cabo, my fiancée and I were greeted by
friends who spend considerable time in the southern Baja town. They
took us out to Las Guacamayas, their favorite taco place. “You like
tacos al pastor?” they asked. As they well knew, if they weren’t
already, al pastor would become my new favorite.

Posted inFood & Drink

Baja Sur Taco Tour: Dollar tacos south of the border

Mike Bookey

Editor's note: There is a long tradition of Bendites sneaking south to
Baja California to escape the long Central Oregon winters. With that in
mind, we asked one of our dining correspondents to give us her
impressions of the beach side culinary scene during a recent trip.
On the Baja taco tour.Fish
tacos and Baja California are synonymous. Right? I found out on a
recent trip to Baja that ordering a little turf with your surf is a
good idea too. Sure, the fish is fresh and lovely. Coming from Bend in
the wintertime, I thought I would eat fish tacos every day of my
vacation. But my quest for fish tacos turned into a delectably edible
educational experience involving both tacos del mar y de la tierra.
On
our first night in San Jose del Cabo, my fiancée and I were greeted by
friends who spend considerable time in the southern Baja town. They
took us out to Las Guacamayas, their favorite taco place. "You like
tacos al pastor?" they asked. As they well knew, if they weren't
already, al pastor would become my new favorite.

Posted inMusic

It’s a Good Winter: The new Bon Iver EP

Mike Bookey

Bon Iver
Blood Bank
Jagjaguwar
Where does Blood Bank fit with the frozen fog of For Emma, Forever Ago,
Bon Iver's much-acclaimed debut from last winter? It isn't an
afterthought, or an echo, or B-sides, though some of the songs were
recorded around the same time as For Emma in a little cabin in
Wisconsin during the good winter (French translation: Bon Hiver) after
which the band is named. It has similarities to
the experimental, beautiful mess that Justin Vernon captured in his
wooded solitude, but Blood Bank also feels like a series of postcards -
letting us know that the singer is traveling on, his heartbreak perhaps
slightly dulled.

Posted inNews

Recession Refugees: COCC scrambles as laid-off workers turn to the classroom

Mike Bookey

Archie Hamilton, a 45-year-old student at Central Oregon Community
College, describes himself as a dislocated worker. He’s spent most of
his adult life in the wood industry, primarily as a mill worker, but
his last job was with Bend’s Host Industries building motor homes and
campers. Last summer, when gas prices peaked out and the economy
nosedived, Hamilton, went to the Oregon Employment Department to apply
for benefits and to find work using the state’s iMatchSkills jobs
database, only to discover that there were only 200 job openings posted
across the state.

"I was told at the unemployment office that all of the skills I had
were really tough to match with a job," Hamilton said. "I had a friend
who had gone back to school in addiction studies at COCC and he talked
me into filling out forms for grants and applying to get into school."

Posted inCulture

Steep and Cheap: Skiing Hoodoo under the lights

Mike Bookey

Adam Sather shreds it up under the lights.Nightlife in the winter can sometimes seem one-dimensional. The music
scene grows a bit stagnant; the bar crawl can bring on fits of déj vu.
Most of winter's allure derives from the prospect of hitting the
slopes, and it's an activity that many of us partake in regularly.But even with as much skiing as we do, night skiing is a pastime mostly unfamiliar
to us Bendites. Mt. Bachelor being so close, most of us would probably
rather hit the hill early the next day than make the trip to Hoodoo,
Ski Bowl or Mt. Hood Meadows.
Like most great ideas, my decision to
drive to Hoodoo was made on a whim. A particularly nasty
day-after-Christmas storm and low visibility sent us home early from
Mt. Bachelor still hungry for a few more turns. With the snow still
falling, we loaded up the car, popped in our clear lenses and took off
to Hoodoo's opening night. About an hour later we pulled into the
parking lot, quickly threw on our gear and rushed off to meet our
friends who were already enjoying the heavy and steady extra-light
snowfall.

Posted inOpinion

Barbarians in the Badlands

Mike Bookey

Assuming they're able to read, some of the morons who get their jollies
from trashing the natural landscape might have read that the Badlands
wilderness bill is about to get passed and decided to get out there and
do more damage while they could.

David Eddleston, organizer of the
group Friends of the Badlands, sent us a report from the battlefront
last week. According to him, he and other "Fobbitts" patrolled the area
on Jan. 8 and found signs of "recent incursions from both quad ATVs and
powered dirt bikes at various points."
Signs marking the area
as closed to motor vehicles had been blasted with gunfire. "Oddly, a
locker had been dragged approx 200 meters into the Badlands and
securely installed on a rimrock ridge. And that had also been used as a
target," Eddleston added.

Posted inOpinion

Inaugural Musings: Wheelchairs, seizures and a math check

Mike Bookey

The 44th

So I'm watching the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as our 44th President, trying to calculate the number of coal-fired electricity plants and oil-burning cars, buses and planes utilized to make this day so special, guesstimating that the Earth will heat at least 1ยฝ degrees before D.C. is done celebrating itself. It was all we expected, indeed deserved, our millions of dollars in donations ensuring that hope is still alive. And then the following happened:
Lord Cheney Not
Looking So Well
Wearing a fedora that matches his old pal and Indian-giver Jack Abramoff, former (oh the joy in being able to write that!) Vice President Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair, and purposely well hidden behind bulletproof glass. Maybe there's tact in the old grumpy Halliburton hack after all: He could have faked his death months ago and we'd now be celebrating Condi Rice as our 44th - African-Americans still pleased but the GLBT community ecstatic at the thought of our first butch prez.

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