In an interview with Roger Ebert replayed after his death, the movie reviewer discussed his other passion: music. In his earlier career, Ebert had been as much a music reviewer as a movie critic, and a screenwriter for the cult classic Valley of the Dolls. He even wrote a never-produced film for the Sex Pistols. […]
Phil Busse
Phil Busse has done his tour of duty with alt-weeklies, starting in 1992 right after graduation from Middlebury College as the first environmental beat reporter for San Francisco Weekly. After a brief detour through the University of Oregon School of Law, Phil returned to writing as the first Managing Editor for Portland Mercury. In 2006, he started the Media Institute for Social Change in Portland, through which he continues to host a summer program teaching college students to produce documentaries.
Until he was 25 or so, Phil thought that he would be a spy, and took scuba lessons to prepare, and learned to drive a motorcycle and an 18-wheeler. Perhaps, then, it is unsurprising that his favorite holiday is the Fourth of July (he loves blowing stuff up). He feels at home with Joseph Conrad's fictional characters.
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides
Summertime and the Living Smells Like Patchouli
More than 20 years ago, I swore off hippie concerts. At the time, I was a budding intern at San Francisco Weekly and went off on my first investigative reporting story. My editor wanted copy about nitrous oxide—or, “hippie crack,” as he called it. Allegedly, hippie concerts were awash in a new fad—brain-freezed buzzes from […]
Posted inNews
Overheard
I first started writing for weekly papers 20 years, as an intern for San Francisco Weekly. At the time, to make financial ends meet, I also had to paint houses. It was a tale of two jobs: White collar writer, combing City Hall and the San Francisco clubs for stories, and then putting on my […]
Posted inCulture
Werewolves in La Pine
Red Moon: As Smart as it is suspenseful
While readers in the other 49 states certainly should enjoy Benjamin Percy’s terse, wryly humorous and wonderfully suspenseful Red Moon, reading the story about werewolves and resistance movements is particularly titillating for Oregonians. Percy was raised in Tumalo and, with precise observations, draws out both the physical and psychological landscape of the region. Aside from […]
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides
Working Moms
We salute you
Last week, the charming first lady Michelle Obama was talking on a morning TV show in Vermont when she slipped up and called herself a “single mother.” For the past five years, with aplomb and a decent amount of tasteful fashion, Michelle Obama has balanced her role as a professional public figure and her private […]
Posted inSpecial Issues & Guides
Word to your Mother
The Source goes truly interactive with media salons
Gone are the days when reading the newspaper is a one-way conversation. Oh sure, we have our wonderful blog at the Source, you comment on our FB page and we request tweets from you now and again. But we want to do more! To take us into the 21st century we’re going old school, as […]
Posted inCulture
99 Percent Great
We’re Not Broke rich with inspiration
Mid-last decade, An Inconvenient Truth brought a surprising amount of mainstream attention to global warming. Even Al Gore has expressed shock that millions of people would tune into what is essentially a power point presentation about a scientific phenomena. But what is additional groundbreaking about An Inconvenient Truth—the 2006 Oscar winner for Best Documentary—is that […]
Posted inCulture
Cinco de Cinema
Mexican Cinema’s Renaissance
By the ’70s, as Hollywood kicked into high gear with commercial blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars, to the south, Mexican cinema was going in another direction. What had been a promising, shining industry, both artistically adventurous and financially solvent, began to sputter. Many of the films produced in Mexico during the ’60s and ’70s […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Little Bites: Cinco de Drinko
The official feliz roundup
Cinco de Mayo is an odd holiday for gringos to celebrate. It would be a bit like Mexicans celebrating Gettysburg. In 1862, a very young General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín scored an unlikely defeat of the French troops at the Battle of Puebla, and helped turned back Napoleon III’s forces (which, really, what were they doing […]
Posted inNews
Blockbuster This Summer
Housing Frenzy, Part Deux
In late March, I stepped into the Editor position at the Source and, in preparation, began looking for a house in Bend. I have owned homes in Portland, know what I like and also know the business end of a hammer. I wasn’t afraid of a fixer-upper, but also was hoping to find something near […]
