We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll: Gonzo at Wal-Mart, mud flap sales and Scientology

Posted inOpinion

We Sold Our Souls For Rock and Roll: Gonzo at Wal-Mart, mud flap sales and Scientology

Eric Flowers

The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from the catwalk at the annual fashion show in La Pine, wearing a tube-top, cutoff jeans shorts and cowboy boots, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.

And the Winner is…
Forget Simon, let's talk Sonia-Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, that is, who was nominated on Monday by President Obama to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. If her controversial same-sex marriage decision in Rocky v. Bullwinkle and those pictures of her eating a pickle don't come to light, Judge Sotomayor will become the first Hispanic and third female U.S. Supreme Court justice. "An inspiring woman who I believe will make a great justice." lauded Obama while introducing Judge Sotomayor's nomination. A case surely to hit the new justice's desk will be the California Supreme Court's upholding of a voter-approved ban on same-sex unions, which allows existing same-sex marriages to remain legal (how's that for confusing?). As Sotomayor's nomination was announced, nearby, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wiped away a tear, mumbled something incoherent, then returned to stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.

Posted inCulture

Slideshows on Fire: Ignite Bend displays the power of Power Point

The Source Staff

Next slide, please.It's tough to get excited about Power Point presentations. Who would
believe the software that your company's HR departments uses to outline
the new personal day policy and your professor employs to bullet point
the notable events of the Crimean War could possibly lend itself to
anything even mildly entertaining?

Yet this conference room slideshow
software is perhaps the key ingredient for the June 4th Ignite Bend
event at the Tower Theatre. And unlike those HR presentations, the
event should prove to be a big draw. Ignite events have been
flourishing across the country for three years now and the concept
landed in Bend in February when the first-ever Ignite Bend took place.
The
concept is pretty simple: Each presenter has five minutes of stage time
in which they present 20 different automatically rotating 15-second
slides. Once the slideshow starts, it doesn't stop, regardless of the
performance - which range from informative lectures to musical comedy
routines to performance art. At the first Ignite Bend, there was a
presentation on the correlations between poker and life, a defense of
local Christians, a talk on the history of Legos and a song about
getting laid off.

Posted inOutside

Revisiting the Silent Spring: The need for clean waters

Jim Anderson

Male Pacific Tree Frog singing his Song of Spring.The frogs we hear singing their hearts out every evening are our tiny
Pacific Tree Frog, Pseudacris regilla, a common species throughout the
Northwest. They range from Northern California, all through Oregon and
Washington, British Columbia, and eastward to Idaho, Montana and
Nevada. These little guys come in shades of greens or browns, and can
be found from sea level up to over 11,000 feet, as well as our dry,
cold High Desert.
Male tree frogs begin the mating business in
early spring (and there are many of us who have heard them practicing
in our basements on warm winter nights); they migrate to ponds, where
they all start singing at once, and very loudly. The guy with the
loudest voice gets to mate first with the females laying their eggs on
and under vegetation and leaf litter in shallow, calm, clean water. And
they are a hardy bunch; they have to be to survive "spring" in Central
Oregon.
If the eggs are not eaten by salamanders or snakes,
embryos will become tadpoles within one to three weeks. If the tadpoles
are not eaten by salamanders, snakes and herons, the tadpoles will feed
on periphyton, filamentous algae, diatoms and pollen in and on the
surface of the water. If they are not eaten by bigger salamanders,
snakes, fish, bullfrogs, kingfishers or herons, about two and a half
months later, the tadpole’s metamorphosis is complete and they leave
the water as frogs and become terrestrial predators on arthropods.

Posted inOutside

Live in the Moment: Reminders from a tragedy and man’s best friend

Pam Stevenson

STEVE LARSEN REMEMBERED
Dogs don't just live in the moment-they lick it, roll in it and breathe it in.Bend lost one of its greatest athletes last
week. Steve Larsen, who was only 39, collapsed during a running workout
at the Cascade Middle School track on Tuesday May 19th and died. Shock
waves rippled through the Bend community.
"It was sad and very
shocking," said Max King, who was leading the workout. "I had them
doing a standard track workout.  Four sets of a tempo pace 1000m,
followed by a 5K pace 800m. We had just started and we were in the
middle of the first 800m. He just went down to the track on his hands
then rolled to his back. Some people thought he had pulled a muscle at
first. It was obvious pretty much right away though that something more
was wrong. We started CPR immediately and within four to five minutes
the ambulance was there. Unfortunately in this case nothing we could
have done would have saved him. There were several nurses and multiple
people trained in CPR. We did everything we were trained to do. I'm
proud of the group of people I have out there. They were amazing."
I
first met Steve when he was 21 years old and racing for the U.S.
National Cycling Team. Two years older than Lance Armstrong, he was
definitely one of our brightest young stars. Steve raced on the
Motorola team with Lance for three years in the early 1990s, racing in
the Giro d'Italia and other major European events. He was probably the
only professional to compete in the world championships for road,
mountain bike, track, cyclocross, triathlon and off-road triathlon.

Posted inCulture

Honor The Code: Avalon Code puts players in charge

Mike Bookey

Calling all introverts.Streaming video. Digital pictures. Audio files. Like the most active
types of media at the beginning of the 21st Century, videogames are
composed of electronic impulses. Any digital work of art is encoded in
countless electrical on/off signals the same way that a symphony is
encoded in sounds and silences. The electronic codes are the binary
beats of the digital age.

But videogames blur the line between
viewer/listener/creator/audience. They make us all players of the work
of art. Some part of every game's design is unbalanced unless a player
makes a decision-Up or down? Yes or no? Blue pill or red pill?-and
shifts the play in that direction. There is always a choice for the
gamer.
But since everything in a videogame is part of a code,
anything can ultimately be manipulated by the person who has access to
it. Normally it's only the creator of a videogame who gets to decide
how strong the monsters are, or what kind of weapons they'll have when
they appear. But Avalon Code is a role-playing game that lets players
determine-using a magical book called the Book of Prophecy-the
qualities of almost anything in the game.

Posted inCulture

They’ll Be Back: Action is Terminator’s salvation

Mike Bookey

You’re lucky you’re not a stage hand, my friend…Terminator Salvation could very well be the best action blockbuster of
the summer and by far the best of 2009. This flick excels in delivering
non-stop and well-timed action scenes without skimping on plot. As a
great, high energy battle-for-survival adventure, Terminator
Salvation's level of intensity never stops.

The prequel to the first
Terminator takes place in 2018 wherein John Connor (Christian Bale) has
to find and save young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin of Charlie Bartlett
fame) from the artificial intelligence military organization Skynet
(based in a dilapidated San Francisco) and their robot machines. Connor
has to make sure Reese stays alive so he can eventually be sent to the
past to have sex with his mother so he (Connor) can be born. Got it?
Connor must then battle the terminator army and move mountains
(sometimes literally) to convince the underground resistance to help
save mankind from an evil transport machine while they attempt to
overthrow the machine-protected government. Introduced to move the plot
along, a new character, Marcus (Sam Worthington) helps to reveal the
underlying motives and prejudices of both sides. To the plot's credit,
it stands alone as an action flick, but also works well as the
beginning to the Terminator series, incorporating all the things any
loyal fan would pick up on (the photo of Sarah Connor from the
original, her recorded instructions to Connor). What works so well with
this flick is that it follows a bunch of distinct sub plots, from
Marcus' origin to Reese's underground resistance and capture to
Connor's quest and blatant disregard for authority against all odds.
Connor's motivational radio messages come across like a good version of
Mata Hari.

Posted inCulture

Two Wheels on Screen: Introducing the Bend Bicycle Film Festival

The Source Staff

The Banana and the Monkey Man – seen around town.Solidifying our place as Bicycle Town U.S.A. has taken some work. We
have miles and miles of trails, locally grown road-riding talent of the
highest order as well as a massive number of bike commuters and cycling
shops. But now we can add another notch in our bicycling belt in the
birth of the Bend Bicycle Film Festival.

Similar in format to the
always popular Powderhound Review, the event is a catch all of sorts
for all films relating to bicycling. Given our community's penchant for
two wheelers, there was hardly a shortage of submissions. One of the
festival's organizers, Bill Warburton, says that they received 24
submissions and hope to get somewhere between 15 and 20 of those films
into the hour and a half slated for local programming.
A
fundraiser for the Central Oregon Trail Alliance and the Bend Cycling
Club, the Bend Bicycle Film Festival covers the wide variety of cycling
mediums, including a piece on unicycling as well as footage from last
year's Cyclocross championships.

Posted inFood & Drink

Corner Store Attitude with Sophisticated Tastes: Jackson’s Corner Finds the Perfect Combination

Alice Finer

A veggie sandwich on focacia served with sunshine at Jackson’s Corner.It's rare to find an environment where freelancers with laptops, ladies
who lunch, families with children and neighborhood locals are equally
comfortable, but less than a year after opening, Jackson's Corner has
achieved that and more. In attitude, it certainly has the feel of
"corner store," which reflects its location in the historic Delaware
Market building. Though you're out of luck if you're expecting to pick
up your groceries-unless, of course, your diet consists entirely of
gourmet condiments, Kettle Chips, many and varied local and
international beers and organic cat food. But behind the curiously
stocked shelves is a kitchen of the highest caliber, and in the end,
isn't that what you'd rather have on your corner?

It also doesn't
hurt that the open, bright space, dominated by blonde wood and brick,
has something for pretty much everyone. It's perfect for your morning
coffee and croissant with the paper, a lunch meeting or takeout for the
office (it's just blocks from downtown) or a couple of pints with a
sandwich at one of the sidewalk tables on a summer day. As Jackson's is
rather near my corner, I've spent an afternoon or two plugged in at the
window counter using the free wi-fi (as I am now) and have never felt
pressured by the friendly staff to wrap it up after my meal was
finished.

Posted inFood & Drink

Corner Store Attitude with Sophisticated Tastes: Jackson’s Corner Finds the Perfect Combination

Alice Finer

A veggie sandwich on focacia served with sunshine at Jackson’s Corner.It’s rare to find an environment where freelancers with laptops, ladies
who lunch, families with children and neighborhood locals are equally
comfortable, but less than a year after opening, Jackson’s Corner has
achieved that and more. In attitude, it certainly has the feel of
“corner store,” which reflects its location in the historic Delaware
Market building. Though you’re out of luck if you’re expecting to pick
up your groceries-unless, of course, your diet consists entirely of
gourmet condiments, Kettle Chips, many and varied local and
international beers and organic cat food. But behind the curiously
stocked shelves is a kitchen of the highest caliber, and in the end,
isn’t that what you’d rather have on your corner?

It also doesn’t
hurt that the open, bright space, dominated by blonde wood and brick,
has something for pretty much everyone. It’s perfect for your morning
coffee and croissant with the paper, a lunch meeting or takeout for the
office (it’s just blocks from downtown) or a couple of pints with a
sandwich at one of the sidewalk tables on a summer day. As Jackson’s is
rather near my corner, I’ve spent an afternoon or two plugged in at the
window counter using the free wi-fi (as I am now) and have never felt
pressured by the friendly staff to wrap it up after my meal was
finished.

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