We're still keeping our fingers crossed, but it's beginning to look like the Great Swine Flu Pandemic is petering out.
The Swine Flu Threat Has Flown — Maybe
Posted inNews
Photographic Proof: Obama’s a Wimp!
It would be a shame if Republicans went extinct - they give us so many great laughs.
Posted inMusic
Gypsies in Mariachi Clothing: Creating geographical confusion with Diego’s Umbrella
Raise your freak flag…"We're huge in Holland," says Tyson Maulhardt, the guitarist for the San Francisco band Diego's Umbrella, adding a quick laugh.
Every internationally touring band has some out-of-the way country
where they claim to be "huge," so this isn't necessarily a strange
comment…but Holland? Really? We've heard Japan more than enough times
and Spain also gets tossed around, but this is a first for Holland. But
with a sound that encompasses the music of at least three different
continents, why wouldn't Hollanders go crazy when this quirky yet
musically solid band lights up their local stages?
The Hollanders go nuts for them, but the Germans? Not so much, says
Maulhardt, as he and fiddler Jason Kleinberg discuss the band's third
European tour, which kicks off in September.
"The Germans like to sit there and listen with their hand on their
chins and then they'll come up to you after the show and share their
in-depth observations," says Maulhardt.
Since beginning with Mexicali ambitions in Santa Cruz in 2001, Diego's
Umbrella has prided itself on melting together a mish-mash of world
influences into a surprisingly modern sound. The band's instrumentation
includes a fiddle and accordion and at times their product is that of a
wandering Eastern-European band of minstrels who were abducted by
flamenco masters, and yeah, it's weird, but incredibly accessible. Call
it world music for beginners, if you will. And this is how Maulhardt
says the band has always operated.
Posted inNews
Bulletin Employees Hit With Pay Cut
The tough times that have battered newspapers across the country have hit home in Bend: Staffers at The Bulletin and its parent company, Western Communications Inc., were told yesterday that they'll be taking pay cuts of up to 10%.
Posted inNews
Cessna: Another Big-League Dream Has Flown
Another one bites the dust: Cessna announced yesterday that it's laying off the last 200 workers at its Bend manufacturing plant and closing the operation for good.
Posted inOutside
Where Wolves?: Reclassifying wolves could have consequences
This is the second installment in a two-part piece about the decision to remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species list in Montana and Idaho.
After the War, there was a lot of 1080 (known to the chemical industry as sodium fluoroacetate) stored in military installations around the US; it was too costly to destroy, so someone came up with the bright idea to give it to the rat-chokers to kill wildlife – and boy, did it ever! From mice to coyotes to eagles, 1080 did the job.
What no one knew at the time was that coyotes are not wolves, even though in some places in the U.S., like Texas, they're called, "wolves." Coyotes do not act, think, or behave like wolves.
If a male coyote (known as the "dog") pairs up with a female coyote, (known as a "bitch") produces 3 to 5 pups, and protects a territory, that's just fine and dandy, that's normal behavior. But if some menace, greater than family or territorial conflict, threatens the coyote, good old Darwin's ideas kick in. The dogs then run with up to three or four bitches, and instead of producing three or so pups, each bitch gives birth to up to eight young. Instead of one pair protecting a given territory, it's "every dog for itself and let's get what we can."
Posted inCulture
Something Close to the American Dream: My night of Bunco
Call me the tumblin’ diceLast month I found myself the substitute player at a Bunco party where every one of the thirteen women was a former high school cheerleader. Me, the person who skipped any high school assembly remotely promoting "spirit" to drink coffee at Denny's, the classic dichotomy of Us vs. Them, the Jocks vs. the Goths, intense as gang warfare.
When I received the invitation to be a substitute player in the form of a cheery call from my sister-in-law, a twinge of post-angst nostalgia ground beneath my thirty-five-year-old bones. I was forced to cross a line no less important than a political or religious conviction, hanging out with my hometown's ex-cheerleaders. Still, I said yes, intrigued with the chance to observe my generation's version of something close to the American Dream.
I won't pretend to grasp why some girls want to be cheerleaders any more than I can understand why groups of women all over the country meet once a month to roll dice. And I hated to admit it, but I was nervous. As they say, I didn't want to throw away the "street cred" I had earned from years of calf-busting platform shoes and Morrissey concerts and too many bottles of black nail polish to count just to fit in - even for one night.
Posted inOutside
California Dreamin’: Soul Surfing and Riding Down Memory Lane
Surfing Santa CruzThe Mamas and the Papas pop into my head about this time every year:
"All the leaves are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a winter's day.
I'd be safe and warm
If I was in L.A.
California dreamin'
On such a winter's day."
When Winter is clinging onto Central Oregon like gummy klister, I like to kick start spring with a sojourn south. So, last week, I piled my road bike, mountain bike, surfboard and dog into my van and roadtripped down to Santa Cruz for some surfing and then continued on to Palo Alto for some riding. Nothing was going to stop me from getting much-needed saltwater therapy and a Vitamin D infusion - not even the tire schrapnel on I-5 that ripped off my bumper grill and took out the air conditioning on the 92-degree day that began our journey.
SURFIN' SANTA CRUZ
Santa Cruz is a 10-hour drive from Bend and a surfing epicenter. Birthplace of O'Neil Wetsuits, board shops line the city streets and the Surfing Museum sits atop a pink and yellow iceplant-blanketed bluff overlooking reknowned Steamer Lane, a world-class point break. (Sadly, the city has shut down the the museum for economic reasons, and a local group is trying to raise $30,000 to keep it alive.) Once you're a surfer, places like this feel like home. For me, even more so, because the ashes of my dear, dear friend Dave Stevenson ride the waves at Steamer's.
Posted inCulture
Mafia Monopoloy: Latest Godfather has the goods
I started out with no respect for The Godfather II. In The Godfather: The Game, classic scenes from one of the world's greatest movies were fumblingly recreated with a videogame engine, and the gameplay never coalesced into a coherent experience. With things tending in that direction, I thought that a videogame sequel named after an even better film could only get worse.
But after the first few minutes, I realized that The Godfather II was leaving the movies far behind. Sure, there were a few characters that made the awkward transition into the game world. And the basic scenario takes its cues from The Godfather Part II. But for the most part, the videogame sequel concentrates on tweaking the core gameplay that the first game established.
The Godfather II is, at heart, a game of mobster Monopoly. Even though it affects a Grand Theft Auto III style, most of the game is about building and operating a mafia empire. There are occasional car chases and plenty of shootouts, but The Godfather II wisely limits the number of "drive around" missions, and concentrates on team-building and business operations. It's all about managing the turf and making money from whores, junk and dope.
Posted inCulture
Misinformed: Beautiful messed up people make ugly messed up movie
The Thriller video shoot is next door, guys. It's not until about three-quarters of the way through that you get to find out why this movie is called The Informers, and by then it's far too late to care. The opening scene starts out just fine, a party rife with '80s fashion and hairstyles, blaring "New Gold Dream" by Simple Minds. It was initially entertaining to see these circa-1983 dudes and chicks wearing Ray Bans, relentlessly looking like a take-themselves-way-too-seriously Breakfast Club, but it spiraled down fast from there. It takes a little under 10 minutes to figure out that The Informers is going to be one long dreary and tedious ride into the land of lame cinema.
The plot follows four or five different stories that barely interlock. There are LA cocktails, sushi and arugula salads. There's Billy Bob Thornton as a dazed-and-confused movie producer, his haggard, sex-addicted wife played by Kim Basinger, Wynona Ryder as a TV newscaster, Mickey Rourke as a sleazy kidnapper turned wimp, and Chris Isaak playing a drunken dad. But the lesser-knowns do most of the heavy lifting, Mel Raido plays drug-addled rock star Brian Metro; the late Brad Renfro (Ghost World) in his last role is Jack, a chubby and super nervous desk clerk, and Jon Foster (Windfall - What, you've never heard of it?) is Graham whom I guess one could say the story revolves around.