With my first bite of a Chicago Hot Dog from Chicago Hot Dog and Italian Beef, I became an honorary sibling of The Blues Brothers' Jake and Elwood. Owner Jeff DeHart has brought a taste of the Windy City to Central Oregon.
Suzanne Burns
Posted inCulture
A Giant Rabbit, a Final Curtain: 2nd Street Theater closes down with a spirited take on Harvey
2nd Street Theater closes down with a spirited take on Harvey.
Brian Johnson, director of 2nd Street Theater's last official production, Harvey, rallied his cast at the beginning of a recent dress rehearsal. He joked, “You should all feel honored and dismissed,” at being the final play before the theater closes.
In true “the show must go on” form, owner and artistic director Maralyn Thoma remains optimistic. She spoke of her love of the theater, the cast, the community, while lamenting the inability to finance the business during times when shows aren't playing. Others have shown interest in the space and Thoma sounds confident the theater will continue in new incarnations.
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Why Modern Poetry Matters: A conversation with The Nature of Words featured poet Matthew Dickman
A conversation with The Nature of Words featured poet Matthew Dickman.
Matthew Dickman is the exact kind of poet we need at The Nature of Words this year. Big of heart, generous of spirit. Playful. Accessible. At times uncomfortably honest. The Portland-born Dickman's bio reads like that of an author much older than 33: multiple poems and a feature profile (along with his twin brother, Michael, a poet in his own right) in the New Yorker; winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award; at the time of this writing, a finalist for the Oregon Book Award. All-American Poem is blazing a path through the world of modern poetry and I, for one, am smitten. Here's what Dickman had to say about his work, Jay Z and his appearance here in Bend next month.
Posted inCulture
Flash Fiction: Ol' Brown Eyes
The woman-who-wanted-to-be-a-man married the man-who-wanted-to-be-a-woman. The arrangement felt confusing at first, not knowing who belonged to the wrench set, the mascara tube, where one body ended and the other began. Sometimes it was hard to tell if they were really married at all.
The woman-who-wanted-to-be-a-man resented her partner. The way “he” loathed his body hair, mocked his Adam's apple, complained how his testicles always looked so sad. Annoyingly sad, hanging around with not much to do but fish for the occasional disingenuous compliment.
Posted inCulture
Wilkommen to Cabaret!: Cat Call Productions brings Berlin to the Tower
Cat Call Productions brings Berlin to the Tower
“We have no hassles in here. Here, life is beautiful!” intones the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club in Cat Call Productions' inaugural showing of Cabaret.
Posted inCulture
Spend an Enchanting Night on Guy J. Jackson's Tintar Isle
“Who at least doesn't want to visit someplace beautiful?” questions the Stubby Motherlover, the song-singing, 30-fingered creature, one of many captivating characters to make an
“Who at least doesn't want to visit someplace beautiful?” questions the Stubby Motherlover, the song-singing, 30-fingered creature, one of many captivating characters to make an appearance in Guy J. Jackson's Tintar Isle.
Jackson, a consummate storyteller, recently moved back to Bend after performing original material for three years in England. In a riveting hour and a half, he creates a world that is nearly incomparable in its originality. I would say, think Garrison Keillor – if Keillor was cool – combined with Lewis Carroll at his Jabberwocky best, but even this analogy fails to capture the touching strangeness of Tintar Isle.
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Biscuits and Beatdowns: A neurotic's quest for Best of Show at the Deschutes County Fair
“This is great! This is everybody's dream,” said Linda Scott, first-time baked goods judge at the 2009 Deschutes County Fair.
From 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. the day before the fair kicked off this year, Linda tasted every single entry in the senior and adult categories. Linda's parents ran Gibb's Bakery in Redmond for 45 years, so the woman knows her way around a pie or two. In five hours she sampled nut pies and divinity, cakes and fudge, enough chocolate cookies to satiate the most vicious bout of PMS.
Sitting across the table from her, I lost count after the first dozen yeast rolls and cheese muffins, and a white-blonde confection straight from a retro Betty Crocker cookbook, gleaming under the florescence like a '50s pin-up queen.
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Tales of a Diehard Skeptic: My afternoon at the psychic fair
I come from a long line of Irish-Catholic skeptics. When I told my sister I was attending the recent psychic fair at Between the Covers
I come from a long line of Irish-Catholic skeptics. When I told my
sister I was attending the recent psychic fair at Between the Covers
books she replied, "You mean the psycho fair?" When I regaled
my husband with tales of seeing a certified Reiki Master that afternoon
he quipped, "After this is she going to "reiki" the lawn?" So you can
imagine my hesitation towards the world of the "healing arts."
I hoped a visit with Clairvoyant Astrologer Eileen Lock would change
things. I'm the kind of person who wears black most of the time and
views Kafka as light summer reading. Without knowing this (or did
she?), Eileen agreed to give me a complimentary reading a week before
the fair. Eileen was affable yet straight-shooting, with a
non-hippie-dippy delivery that enabled me to listen to her with open
ears. But it didn't stick. With 40 years of experience, Eileen comes
highly recommended. And I do believe many things she says have
validity, except when she told me to wear less black because black
means you are hiding something. I thought black was chic?
Posted inCulture
Politics
They made it mean something, the choice between cake and pie. Whoever thought as children that the world would grow up cruel enough to pit
They made it mean something, the choice between cake and pie. Whoever thought as children that the world would grow up cruel enough to pit frosting against filling? History tells us the seeds of revolution came from one too many times hearing, "The proof of the pudding is in the crust." Maybe the kind of place where they do things like write letters, on actual paper, and drink tea understands pudding with crust, but we make no attempt to understand it here.
The pie people called the cake people "gimmicky." Too much precedence placed on sugar flowers and fancy writing and those little plastic dinosaurs and clowns and princesses that make their way to the center of most celebrations, only to be rescued from sweet sludge, licked clean, and displayed like precious mementos along a child's favorite shelf. People who eat cake suffer from arrested development. The cake people called the pie people old-fashioned, equating a fondness for the much-maligned crust with other dubious things, like leaving your Christmas decorations up past Valentine's Day and playing the state lottery.
Posted inCulture
You Make Me Feel There Are Songs to be Sung: My Way – A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra
It was a night of gin martinis and evening gloves at the Tower Theatre, an homage to Ol'
Blue Eyes that all ages will fall for. My Way: A Musical Tribute to
Frank Sinatra, produced by Innovation Theatre Works under the artistic
direction of Chris Rennolds and Brad Hills, is a journey to a time
where elegance ruled, men loved dames, dames loved mink stoles, and the
world, at least for the duration of a song, believed in the fable of
perfect love.
An ensemble cast, led by Broadway veteran Daniel
Guzman, croons through a medley of fifty-eight standards intermixed
with Sinatra tidbits delivered with the affability of a vintage
nightclub act. Guzman, a haberdasher's dream endowed with an engaging
sense of "cool" and a lush voice that refuses to lose its masculine
edge, is the highlight of My Way from the time the curtain opens on his
iconic, tuxedoed silhouette to the magnetic way he commands such
classic songs as That's Life and New York, New York. Guzman's reverence
and dedication to the material never drops to the level of
impersonation. My Way is Guzman's heartfelt and charismatic tribute. He
acknowledges there can only ever be one Chairman of the Boardยธ but
effortlessly manages to transfix the audience from his very first note.