Guess what, bottom-effers? Today marks my employer's most hated time of year, also known as “contract renegotiation day”! For me, it's like Christmas, Halloween, and Mardi Gras all rolled up into one. For my boss, it's more like 9/11, leukemia, and tofu wrapped in a poop tortilla. True, I've often been labeled a “difficult negotiator” – but I always get results! (Dear employer: spoiler alert ahead! Can you please excuse yourself, so I can reveal my most cunning negotiation secrets? THANKS.)
Culture
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I Put a Spell on You: Embrace your inner dungeon dork… errr master
With its chunky graphics, clunky flow and collision-free combat, Dragon Age II feels a little long in the tooth.
Picture yourself walking into the middle of a camp of bandits, holding twin daggers at your sides. The bandits, surprised by your appearance, leap to their feet, drawing swords and knives, crowding around, moving in to attack. Then, from behind you, three tall, buxom women come striding into the camp. Two of them are holding long staves in their hands, the ends dripping with glowing magic energy. The other woman is wearing a guard’s suit of armor and is raising a broadsword over her head. Together, you look like Charlie’s Angels pimped out Dungeons & Dragons style!
Welcome to the enchanted land of Thedas!
Step into a world filled with magic! And not just any magic – magic caused by demons! A world where magic is treacherous and unpredictable. A world where mages and their demon consorts are hunted down and locked away by the government. But don’t worry – for some reason that doesn’t stop adventurers from always having a spellcaster or two along!
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Of Ink and Paint: Mike Toth's downtown gallery brings fine art and tattoo together
The smell of fresh paint still leaks from the walls and possibly from some of the pieces that have recently taken a spot on the wall of the Toth Art Collective.
The smell of fresh paint still leaks from the walls and possibly from some of the pieces that have recently taken a spot on the wall of the Toth Art Collective. The space is new – and it looks new. Everything is immaculately clean, the paintings perfectly spaced and illuminated, but what's really new about the place is the edgy and sometimes dark style of the pieces. Something you don't always see on your monthly First Friday art walk.
In a downtown Bend once dominated by art spaces specializing in scenic landscapes, the Toth Art Collective, featuring the paintings of its namesake, Mike Toth, and other regional and local artists, happens to be one of the largest and most elegant places to see art in the area. But here's the thing – the space is also an incredibly popular tattoo studio.
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Our Picks for 4/6 – 4/14; The Baseball Project, Pine Party, Dine for Dignity, Kevin Kinsella, Yonder Mountain String Band and more
The Source Weekly provides our picks for the best bets in Central Oregon this week.
The Baseball Project, The Minus 5, Steve Wynn
thursday 7
We've been shouting loudly about this show for a while and now it's finally here. The Baseball Project, as you may know, is an all-star band that includes, among others, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, but you should also check out quintessential indie pop of The Minus 5, which open the show. $12/adv at bendticket.com, $15/door. 9pm. Silver Moon Brewing Co., 24 NW Greenwood Ave.
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Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Sucker Punch lives up to its title
Sucker Punch’s premise of Catholic-school-meets-Victoria Secret girls fighting demons, dragons and kicking ass was somewhat appealing.
Unfortunately, Zack Snyder, the guy who brought us the fast-paced Dawn of the Dead redux and the intriguing Watchmen, has softened to PG-13 territory. I went into the widely anticipated Sucker Punch wondering, will this film deliver or not? The previews looked promising. The premise of Catholic-school-meets-Victoria Secret girls fighting demons, dragons and kicking ass was somewhat appealing. Well, Sucker Punch not only doesn't deliver, it's a wretched mess. I can only assume the reason for its title is that it lands a roundhouse blow to the back of the audience's skull for not anticipating how incredibly lame it would be.
The extremely ridiculous plot unfolds in music video bravado and I half expected some titles in the corner to tell me which horrid rock band was doing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).”
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Time Travel Done Right: Gyllenhaal and company somehow make Source Code work
Yes, there’s a certain validity to the pitch-meeting shorthand that would describe this science-fiction thriller as Groundhog Day meets Quantum Leap – but that doesn’t detract from what it manages to do right.
Yes, there’s a certain validity to the pitch-meeting shorthand that would describe this science-fiction thriller as “Groundhog Day meets Quantum Leap” – but that doesn’t detract from what it manages to do right.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Capt. Colter Stevens, a military pilot who awakens disoriented in the middle of a strange experiment: He has been transported into the body of a train passenger eight minutes before the train is blown up in a terrorist attack. And no matter how many times, he has to keep going back to those same eight minutes, because failing to find out who is behind the bombing is not an option.
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Intervention
Humpy calls for an intervention for cable TV station TLC from their programing, which is no longer amusing.
Guys… gather round. It pains me to say this, but it's time to stop ignoring the problem staring us in the face, and actually do something to stop it. Otherwise, we're just enabling this type of behavior, right? Okay, so we're all in agreement; we need to act on this NOW, correct? Good! Now steel yourselves, because we can expect a lot of resistance, and – oh. Get in position, here they come!
HELLO, TLC. I suppose you're wondering why your viewers are gathered together in your living room. It's because… oh, no you don't! You're not going anywhere! You are going to sit down, and hear what we have to say! As your loyal viewers, we're here today to tell you how much your actions have hurt and affected us. I'll start:
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Channeling Johnny Mac: Building a better tennis moustache is this easy
Top Spin 4 takes Pong to the personalizable extreme.
I don’t need no motion-sensitive, 3D TV to be me – a 6’2″ redneck tennis star, complete with handlebar moustache, scruffy mullet, a stringy set of muscles and some serious fans.
I decided to get the plain old ordinary Xbox 360 version of Top Spin 4 so that I could see what kind of game it was without any of those half-baked bells and whistles. Yeah, the PlayStation 3 Move’s version of “Table Tennis” was outstanding. And Kinect Sports kept me occupied for a while. But I wanted to play Top Spin 4 the old fashioned way – with a controller in my hands and my butt in a chair. Plus the game store was out of the PS3 version anyway.
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Art on the Hill: Bill Hoppe on a decade of art on the campus of COCC
It's the first day of the spring term and Bill Hoppe's office on the bottom floor of Central Oregon Community College's Pence Hall is nearly as messy as the construction that's snarling uphill traffic on the expansive campus.
It's the first day of the spring term and Bill Hoppe's office on the bottom floor of Central Oregon Community College's Pence Hall is nearly as messy as the construction that's snarling uphill traffic on the expansive campus. Files and papers cover most of his desktop and there's little floor space not occupied by boxes of artwork and stacks of other framed pieces of art. The office's disarray isn't off-putting, but rather inspirational – like it's overflowing with creativity.
Hoppe has been teaching at the college as an associate professor of art for more than 10 years now and recently staged a show at the school's library that featured pieces from his decade at COCC. He's a painter who, before coming to Bend, made his living as a studio artist and he continues to create his own pieces during the summer. But during the school year, Hoppe devotes much of his attention to his students and in the process has added another segment, albeit often ignored, to the Bend art scene with ongoing shows and exhibits up at the college's Pence Gallery in the Pickney Arts Center.
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Spring Theater Productions Have Sprung in Bend
Thus far, 2011 has proved to be a thriving year for the Bend theater scene.
Thus far, 2011 has proved to be a thriving year for the Bend theater scene. Tuesdays with Morrie goes into its final week, closing on Sunday, April 3. The Bend Experimental Arts Theatre brings the Broadway classic Guys and Dolls to the Summit High School auditorium this week. As time goes on, the theater scene continues to thrive and here are a few good bets to satisfy your need for a good story.
