It's been what seems like a couple of years since Santiago Casanueva first started pushing yerba maté brews to Bendites and he's won a fair number of converts to his leafy coffee alternative that has long been popular in places like Brazil. Now Casanueva is back in downtown Bend just a few paces from his former digs at St. Clair Place. The Top Leaf Maté bar is now serving at the increasingly hip Tin Pan alley, between Lone Pine Coffee and Thump. It's going to take some sales pitch to get Bendites off coffee as good as Lone Pine and Thump, but if anybody can wean you off the bean, it's Casanueava. Bonus web points to anyone who logs online and checks out Casanueava's DIY “webformercial” that ran under the provocative headline, Bend Oregon What Is Yerba Maté. Extra bonus points and a bag of good old fashioned coffee to anyone who can spot and identify the Source staffer featured in the video. E-mail your best guess to editor@tsweekly.com and put off maté for another week.
Little Bites: What's Brewing In Downtown Bend
On Their Own Island: The Dirty Words might head to indie-rock-friendly Portland but first they're making an epic music video
Oh, the music video. The revered opportunity for rock stars to be actors and actors to hang with rock stars. It's a chance for a band to get the faces behind their music out to the people and for fans to see a different side of their act.
Or, perhaps it was those things before shows like Jersey Shore and similar nonsense took over MTV. But the music video still exists and local band The Dirty Words, arguably our only vetted non-high-school indie rock act in Bend, is making one. But they're not really going to be in it.
The band has put a call out across the web for submissions from fans and anyone else who wants to be in a music video, asking them to record themselves “performing” the band's song “Damn Jacket.” They are not asking for high production value, actually they don't want that at all. Rather, the band is asking for distinctively DIY videos from webcams, cell phones and built-in laptops.
Recordings you need to hear that you may have missed: Louis Jordan and his Tympany 5
Louis Jordan and his Tympany 5
Go Blow Your Horn
Released 1957
You might think you've been having fun, but if you haven't heard a good dose of Louis Jordan lately, you're a bore. Louis Jordan is the connection between the Big Band era of the '40s and the rise of R&B. At one point in the mid-'40s, Louis Jordan's recordings held the #1 spot on the black music charts for almost a year. Go Blow Your Horn reflects the upbeat feeling of pop culture of the '50s and puts you on the street corner in the jumping jive world of this incredible sax player.
Our Picks for 12/16 – 12/24: The Shoemaker Brothers, Bill Keale, A Christmas Carol and more
RiffTrax Live: Christmas Shorts-Stravaganza
wednesday 16
Remember that show Mystery Science Theater 3000 where that dude and the two robots would sit through old movies for the mere purpose of mocking them? Yes, it was awesome. Well now the stars of that show are joined by parody master Weird Al Yankovic as they rip apart old-timey Christmas movies. This is the first of an intensely holiday-oriented Picks page, just so you know. 8pm Wednesday, Dec 16. Old Mill Stadium 16, 680 SW Powerhouse Dr.
Bill Keale, A Holiday Concert
friday 18
Quick, shout out the first word that comes to mind when we say, “Christmas.” Did you say, “Hawaiian music?” So did we! At this show, local island music master Bill Keale is joined by his brother Mike, along with Kim Breedlove, and Crystal Lum of the Hokulea Dancers to get you into the holiday mood – island style. 7pm. Old Stone Church, 157 NW Franklin Ave.
Running Dry: The Rainbow Market is the last spot to buy alcohol before the Warm Springs reservation, but the OLCC wants to change that.
A woman sets a case of beer on the counter of the store, but waves the customer behind her to take a turn at the register.
“I'm not done,” she says, smiling.
She returns to a wall of coolers, one of which, like something out of television advertisement, is filled from floor to ceiling exclusively with familiar red-and-white Budweiser iconography – the original Budweiser, that is – and grabs more beer. Outside, the Friday evening traffic buzzes past on Highway 26, riding along the Deschutes River, but the store's parking lot is largely vacant.
The Farm Bureau Gets Down in the Muck
Everybody loves the family farm. According to the conventional wisdom it's the bedrock of American values, the repository of the sturdy virtues of hard work and thrift, the beating heart of the heartland.
So who could possibly have any problem with an organization called Friends of Family Farmers whose aim is to help family farms survive and thrive?
Apparently, of all people, the Oregon Farm Bureau does.
Kendra Kimbirauskas, an organizer of FOFF and owner, with her husband, of a small farm outside Portland, came to Central Oregon this fall to hold a couple of meetings with area farmers to build support for a statewide initiative that would help small farms by improving their access to a labor supply and processing facilities, among other things.
In Their Own Words: Barry O, Berlusconi, and Family Ties that bind
The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from a nearby Christmas display, protecting baby Jesus from fascist secularists, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.
What a week it has been for sound bites and babble! President Obama baffled all of us, the stress of the job obviously affecting his eloquence, while announcing 30,000 more troops for a war we have no intention of winning, “Even as we dig our way out of this deep hole… ” Is he asking for a ladder or merely interested in digging deeper? Then, while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, he said, “I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” Um, ok… Peace bro! “I didn't run for President to bail out a bunch of fatcats.” he added on 60 Minutes, pointing to how distressed Goldman Sachs employees are this holiday season, with only $22 billion in bonuses, closing with, “There shouldn't be anything confusing about that.”
Armed with facts and a nervous tick, Dr. Christina Romer, Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, then invoked FDR on Meet The Press, saying the newly passed financial regulations are “Rules of the Road” that won't hurt business at all, “Of course we want them to return to profitably, and we want them to return to lending… ” Cool! I need a new Discover card and house I can't afford.
Bulletin vs. Environmental Center Rd. 3
Regular Bulletin readers know that the paper's almost comically conservative editorial page has been waging a campaign against the Bend-La Pine School district's arrangement with the Central Oregon Environmental Center, a local non-profit, to put on an environmental education program in local classrooms. This past week, Editor in Chief John Costa chose to take direct aim at one of the Environmental Center's defenders, former city councilor Peter Gramlich, who circulated an e-mail sharply criticizing the paper's editorial board. Prior to the editorial, Costa traded e-mails with Gramlich and in one of those he told the former city councilor that he would “present” Gramlich's letter as part of the paper's response. As far as we, or Gramlich, can tell, he didn't. Instead he opted to quote snippets of it in his Sunday column, a sort of weekly ombudsman piece in which Costa holds forth on the state of the newspaper and often answers critics. Those familiar know that the column is basically a monologue that acts like a strong sedative on the paper's collective readers. But those who did manage to soldier through Costa's spirited defense of the paper this week got the usual clap-trap about the intellectual integrity of the editorial board. What they didn't get was a full reading of Gramlich's original letter.
It's A Dog's Life
Dear Readers,
Last weekend we adopted “Yellow Dog” who is one of nine dogs recently rescued from Harney County and brought to Bend.
Initially we had concerns about his mental and physical condition as a result of him being kept in such an abusive environment so I had to write and get the word out to those of you considering adoption of one of the remaining pups.
Yellow Dog, who is a three-year-old Lab mix, is now one of the happiest and most grateful dogs we've ever known. Although he is just learning what it is to enjoy being a dog, he has brought much happiness into our lives already.
He wasn't house trained but has made no mistakes.
He wasn't leash trained but he walks contentedly by our sides.
He has had to fight for his food under awful conditions but he shows no food aggression, eats slowly and is very calm and gentle with other dogs and our 11-year-old cat, whew!
Duck Or Goose?
Dear Bend,
Hello, we are the ducks of your town. We understand there is a fresh call for our genocide and we'd like to address that.
First of all, though, we do have to agree with one point made by our would-be executioners. PLEASE DO NOT FEED US BREAD.
Now, there are others of you humans that would feed us poison, or would pour oil on our eggs, or would just shoot us all and not even so much as give our carcasses to the poor for Christmas dinner. And why? Because we aren't toilet trained and we poo on the grass and sidewalks. But so what? Are you humans such a wittle itty bitty pookie wookie bunch of cwy baby wabbies that you can't handle occasionally scraping our poo off your shoe? It barely even sticks. And it's made of grass and water and bugs! Not like your toxic, hormone-and-high-fructose-corn-syrup-riddled human poo!