Mike Bookey, Author at The Source - Bend, Oregon

Gear, Legends, and Heroes: From Hillary to Camelbak all in one week

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008January 4, 2023

This is what heaven looks like to your typical overactive Bendite.Sir Edmond Hillary
dies at 88

On May 29, 1953, Sir Edmond Hillary
and Tenzing Norgay became the first mountain climbers to stand on top
of the tallest peak on Earth. "Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation
- these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first man to
stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others have failed.
But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise," reported Hillary,
attempting to sum up his climb. Hillary always considered himself and
his accomplishments as ordinary.
After reaching the summit of
Mt. Everest, Hillary conquered more difficult missions in Nepal. This
country houses Chomolungma, Goddess Mother of the Land, which Tibetan
speakers refer to as Mt. Everest. In 1962 he founded the Himalayan
Trust, a humanitarian nonprofit that raised $250,000 a year to help
build hospitals, health clinics, airfields, and schools.

Culture

A Tortured Soul: The Films of Heath Ledger

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008April 12, 2025

Last week Heath Ledger was found dead in his Manhattan apartment. At
28, he had created a career based on risky roles and shunned the
heartthrob characters he could have played. In his last film, The Dark
Knight, a sequel to Batman Begins, Ledger plays the deranged villain,
The Joker. It is due out in July of this year. Below are the best films
available on DVD of his short, but notable career.
Candy
Ledger
and Abby Cornish are stellar in this bleak tale about two artistic
souls tumbling down the road of self-destruction from heroin use.
Tragic and sad, these characters are the poster children for staying
far away from recreational drug use.
Brokeback Mountain
There's
no discussing Ledger without mentioning Brokeback Mountain. By far his
most challenging role was his heartbreaking performance of Ennis Del
Mar, the sexually conflicted cowboy never able to allow himself the
freedom to be happy. Accolades were mounded on Ledger as well as the
rest of the cast and the film as a whole. This is where Ledger met
Michelle Williams, who later became his romantic partner and the mother
of his child. Ledger had recently separated from Williams.

Culture

Fourth Blood: Stallone kills, kills, kills in another over-the-hill sequel

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008March 16, 2025

How many 60-year-olds can kill like this?Let's get this straight right off the bat, something I'm sure we ALL
know … DO NOT MESS WITH RAMBO. This movie sledgehammers that fact home
by combining preachy stereotypes and super-gore. And you know what?
Parts of it are actually all right.
Rambo opens with grisly authentic
stock footage of the atrocities in Burma (oddly never referred to by
the nation's present-day name of Myanmar). Stallone said he wants this
movie to carry a "real" message, so people will become aware of the
genocide that plagues Burma, but then he chucks himself into a fake-ass
drama smack-dab in the middle of it, allowing him to come across as a
hero, "find" himself and kill tons - and I mean tons - of people in the
meantime.

Food & Drink

Party On: Marz keeps it cool after all these years

The Special Bowl of rice noodles, clam, pork belly and scallions in a chili-soy broth at Marz Bistro. Years ago, three perennially hip

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008July 25, 2023

The Special Bowl of rice noodles, clam, pork belly and scallions in a chili-soy broth at Marz Bistro. Years ago, three perennially hip couples who had been working in
restaurants most of their adult lives decided to give Bend what it
really needed – an urban-feeling oasis of world cuisine, moderate
prices and a creative list of wines priced at half the normal
restaurant mark-up.

Bright colors and wavy booths, salt shakers that
look like squeezy baby toys and a mirror ball helped the atmosphere
attain something that had never been attempted in Bend. The food was
lauded as wonderfully different, a great value and served up from a
down-to-earth, fashion-minded staff.

Food & Drink

Party On: Marz keeps it cool after all these years

The Special Bowl of rice noodles, clam, pork belly and scallions in a chili-soy broth at Marz Bistro. Years ago, three perennially hip

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008February 3, 2024

The Special Bowl of rice noodles, clam, pork belly and scallions in a chili-soy broth at Marz Bistro. Years ago, three perennially hip couples who had been working in
restaurants most of their adult lives decided to give Bend what it
really needed - an urban-feeling oasis of world cuisine, moderate
prices and a creative list of wines priced at half the normal
restaurant mark-up.

Culture

Walls Bring Us Together: CTC goes musical with “The Fantasticks”

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008November 11, 2024

The Fantasticks: Waving jazz hands for 40-plus years.Luisa is 16, "pretty for the first time," and quite insane. Matt is 20,
nerdy, and wondering what's beyond that road. Oh, and they're in love
and as close together as the wall their parents have literally built
between them allows. This isn't another Romeo and Juliet or Pyramus and
Thisbe, but The Fantasticks - the longest-running off-Broadway musical
(some 17,162 performances spanning 42 years), loosely based on Edmond
Rostand's Les Romanesques, and now available to hum along with at the
Cascades Theatrical Company.

Marking the middle of the CTC's 29th
season, The Fantasticks is a stage standard; dripping with nostalgia,
audiences lap up the escapism and the cast ever-cognizant that they are
part of history. Yet the CTC has again offered a twist: Director
Kymberli Colbourne has dared to alter the time-tested formula of The
Fantasticks by replacing the two meddling fathers (who built the wall
to manipulate their children) with two equally errant mothers. Bellomy
(Kimberlee Lear) and Hucklebee (Mandy Rockwell) bring new life to the
sometimes quaint script, while Jimena Romero as Luisa and Scott Carroll
as Matt never take themselves too seriously - which is most welcome
when watching a play nearly a half-century old.

Culture

Our Picks for the week of 1/31 – 2/6

Mike BookeyJanuary 30, 2008April 11, 2025

Stand up Comedy Night – Wednesday 2/6

Randy Liedtke hosts the fourth and final installment of this local laugh factory before he moves his funny ass down to Los Angeles - we knew he was too good to last. So show up and send Liedtke off in style as the redheaded funny man plays his weird little keyboard thing and tells jokes about dogs pretending to be cats. 8:30pm. $10. Summit Saloon and Stage, 125 NW Oregon Ave., 749-2440.

Outside

Fairy Meadows: The ultimate in backcountry skiing adventure

Mike BookeyJanuary 23, 2008July 6, 2024

Living the high life at Pioneer Peack in B.C.If I could look into a crystal ball filled with a snowman and snow
flurries abounding after a good shake and dream up the perfect
backcountry skiing adventure, it would contain the following: fly into
a backcountry hut with several psyched powder lovers, ski all day -
every day - for a week in untracked terrain among jagged peaks and
glaciers, then head back to the hut for lots of good cheer and gourmet
cuisine while basking in the glow and tales of the day's adventures.
This
fairy tale came true the first week of the New Year as my wife Molly
and I drove north to Golden, B.C., After meeting up with the
enthusiastic group in Golden, 20 of us gathered our gear and food at
the helicopter loading site. It was a clear day with great visibility,
perfect for a heli ride. I was fortunate enough to ride shotgun on the
first of five trips our group took to get all our bodies and supplies
into the hut. We flew along the Columbia Arm of Kinbasket Lake, the
headwaters of the Columbia River, before swinging west into the Adamant
Range of the Selkirk Mountains. My eyes bulged as the views became
better with every minute. The heli set us softly down just below the
Bill Putnam (Fairy Meadow) hut in a hanging valley surrounded by
picturesque B.C. mountains.

Culture

Overrated: Films that the MPAA doesn’t want you to see

Mike BookeyJanuary 23, 2008April 12, 2025

In September of 2007, Ang Lee (director of Brokeback Mountain,
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and many more) was saddled with the
NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America's censors on
his movie, Lust, Caution. The rating is the kiss of death at the
box-office. No matter what reviewers say, the large ticket-buying
population of under-17-year-old viewers have already been axed out of
seeing the film, much less those that equate the NC-17 rating with
porn. Most of the time, there is usually one scene that censors just
can't stomach, so to save their films from bombing at the box office,
directors will go back and cut the scene enough to appease the
thumb-screwing censorship committee, which later gets reinserted and
released on DVD as the "director's cut." Below are some "directors cut"
versions of some originally NC-17 or X-rated films.

Food & Drink

Soothing Beverage Choices: Sipping it up at Townshend’s Tea

Mike BookeyJanuary 23, 2008April 29, 2024

A spot of milk with your tea at Townshend’s, Bend’s new downtown teahouse.As the menu at Townshend's Tea Company states, tea has been relegated
second-class status in the States. Ever since rogue colonists tossed
their British rulers' supply overboard into Boston harbor, tea has
taken a back seat to the more pungent, and stimulating, coffee bean.
The new downtown teashop, Townshend's, embraces that underdog
reputation, offering an unabashed sanctuary for tea leaves and tea
lovers.
The location that housed Pfundementals for as many years as I
can remember has been cleaned up, buffed out and infused with a
tea-worthy atmosphere. Retro, antique and modern furniture blend with
the polished concrete floors, pillowed benches and brick walls to lend
a tranquil, but energetic, climate that is imbued with alternative
atmospheric music. The menu is extensive and slightly intimidating for
the tea neophyte. To alleviate some of the possible stress of deciding
from more than 100 teas and infusions, owner Matt Thomas has divided
the selections into types of teas such as white, rooibos and oolong;
rare and top-grade teas like matcha, bao zhong and pu-erh wang; as well
as separating out the infusions which are listed under "Apothecary".

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