Jeff Merkley, stung by Gordon Smith ads attacking him over the purchase of new furniture for state legislative offices, has hit back with a tough ad of his own linking the Republican senator to our $9 trillion national debt.
Furniture Wars: The Merk Strikes Back
Posted inCulture
Micro Cosmos: The Dissident
Never satisfied to just keeping cranking out the same signature brews, Deschutes is unveiling another ambitious, limited run specialty beer at the start of September, The Dissident. The Belgian style brew used a strain of wild yeast that is more commonly associated with European wines to give the beer a distinct flavor characterized by earthy undertones.
Posted inCulture
Of Beers and Brotherhood: Beating the heat at Bend’s annual beer bash
Cold beer and cool toes. Hot! It wasn't just hot at the Fifth Annual Bend Brew Fest last Friday and Saturday, it was Discovery Channel Serengeti hot. It was the type of heat that pounds you into a pancake puddle. Thankfully, those in charge had provided 80 brews, 6 marquees, and two kiddies' pools as cooling stations. Once I tossed the kiddies out of their pool, I soaked my feet and struck up a conversation with a woman in the adjacent pool.
"Water transfers heat from the body four times faster than air."
She peered over her mug and fired a warning shot. "Talk to me again and I'll call security." Okay, so she wasn't in Discovery Channel mode. It was time to slip into my sandals and hydrate with a ginger ale, an albino python, and an arrogant bastard.
Last year there were 30 brewers with a total of 60 beers. This year, that increased to 40 brewers and 80 beers. And a reliable source states they hope to have 50 brewers and 100 beers next year. Party on. Along with your official drinking mug, you got 5 tokens to start you rolling and a nifty little guide to the brews so you could grade your favorites. Maybe next year they could provide us all those little golf pencils. Not sure this beer crowd travels with writing implements. Not sure this crowd can write more than a mark anyway. For those who could read, the names of these handcrafted beers are worth the price of admission-which happily is nothing. I don't care what they taste like, you have to love beers with the names Dancing Trout, Axe Head Red (I think I dated her once.), Hazed n Infused, Sweaty Betty (I know I dated her.), Dogzilla, and my personal favorite-Rejewvenator from Shmaltz Brewing Co., the maker of He'Brew, the chosen beer.
Posted inOutside
Packing Off Pack Rats: Don’t kill the rats, move ’em
Marilyn Miller's bushy-tailed packrat on its way to another home. Have you ever seen a guiltier look in your life than the one you find on a pack rat's face? That poor bushy-tailed pack rat was caught red-handed… No, "green-handed" would be a more accurate. Marilyn Miller of SE Bend caught him plundering her kitchen garden, an unfortunate habit that pack rats cannot seem to break.
Pack rats do not need to drink water, but rather get what they need from the spinach, lettuce, peas and corn they eat in your garden. They then recycle the water repeatedly and probably pee reluctantly, and when they do, it's enough to gag a maggot. Most of the white stains you see on our rim rock are pack rat scent posts or defecation sites.
Bushy-tailed pack rats in the wild are a beautiful and wonderful part of the magnificent World of Nature. However, the ones that got into my church friend's pantry and plundered his emergency food supply was a different matter altogether. Moreover, the ones that got into another friend's well house and ate all the insulation off the walls and wires were not thought of too kindly either.
Then, my good friend, Scott, a fellow Volvo enthusiast, had a pack rat that built a huge stick nest under the hood of his '68 Ford pickup. Scott probably wouldn't have minded that too much if the pack rat hadn't eaten all the insulation off the wiring harness and the spark plug wires.
Posted inOutside
Five Ring Fever: Insights from past Olympians
Suzanne King surrounded by children sponsored by Grandmother’s Education Fund Africa in Kenya.THE SECRET TO WINNING
I think most athletes, no matter their talent level, fantasize about going to the Olympics. I was no different. In my early twenties, I got into bike racing and started winning on the collegiate circuit and some Northern California criteriums and track events. I lived to ride. But, put me in a road race with the likes of Katrin Tobin or Sally Zack and I was off the back like a sack of potatoes. It was pretty clear I didn't have the talent to hang with Olympians, so I had to find another way to make it to the Games. Through my career, I've ended up being fortunate to partake in the Olympic dream by working with some of the greatest athletes in history.
I became the sports scientist for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Cycling Team and dedicated myself for two years to working with the athletes and coaches to use science and engineering to optimize athletic performance. I measured oxygen uptake, analyzed blood lactate, monitored heart rates, plotted pedal forces and studied drag in a wind tunnel. I created Coach Chris Carmichael's first training log (the earliest step in the evolution of Carmichael Training Systems). We had a very talented crop of junior men, led by future pro stars George Hincapie and Freddie Rodriguez. But, the standout of the squad was a 19-year former triathlete named Lance Armstrong.
Posted inCulture
No Narcissism Here: Reflective horror story shatters itself to pieces
With a promising beginning scene and dazzling credits, Mirrors looked like it was going to deliver. I was actually smiling and nodding to myself that this was going to be the horror flick I'd been waiting for. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) an alcoholic cop on leave of absence for the accidental killing of his partner, living with his sister Angela (Amy Smart), separated from his wife Amy (Paula Patton) and kids, is somewhat unstable. To take his mind off his troubles, he takes a job as a night watchman at the Mayflower department store, a gigantic burned out but ornately columned building. The inside charred ruins manage to look pretty haunting with disfigured mannequins everywhere and a ton of mirrors. The history behind the store is textbook ghost story: a lot of innocent lives were lost in a fire. Maybe their spirits are trapped in the mirrors and want out.
The director (Alexandre Aja), who I HAD nothing but respect for, flounders badly here. His first two movies, Haute Tension and the re-dux of Hills Have Eyes were above par, showing extremely ground breaking vision, cool camera work, supreme editing and lots of mind-numbing gore. Mirrors seemed like it was going to take this path. Aja throws in R-rated risks, bloodletting like crazy, but then plays it safe reeling it in, like the stupid plot would hold its own. You'd think with gore, nudity and NYC you couldn't go wrong. Instead Aja falls back on tired old horror movie conventions: slow moving flashlights, investigating dark corners, looking into mirrors over and over and quick jump scare tactics.
Posted inCulture
Play It Again, Woody: The Manhattan neurotic goes international
Oh, to be that cigarette.Vicky Christina Barcelona continues what seems to be Woody Allen's never-ending introspective into the long and winding road of love's labors lost and found and lost again and forever talked about. The prolific and diminutive Woodman has been regurgitating his New York City neuroses across the screen on an almost annual basis for more than 40 years.
The film begins and continues with a narrator. Other than the name Chuck Norris in the opening credits, there is nothing that makes me cringe in dreaded anticipation more than voice-over. If I had wanted a novel on tape, I would have gone to the Bend Library. I was glad that VCB didn't have Allen the actor in it. He has become a sad caricature of himself. But there he was, taking over an early scene in a restaurant. The character Vicky, played by the Brit actress Rebecca Hall, was doing Woody better than Soon-Yi ever could. She had the same lines, tensions, the facial expressions, the fears, constrained tone, and probably the same NY shrink. Ten minutes, and the movie was burdened with a monotone narrator filling in this sketchy New Yorker short story pretending to be a movie, and a tall, female version of Allen. I moved against the wall separating my theater from the one showing Mamma Mia and pressed my ear deep into the dried popcorn oil stains in the hope that Meryl Streep's wailing ABBA tunes would drown out the nonsense Allen was forcing his actors to inflict on the six of us in the auditorium. I longed to be in the next theater with the middle-aged, cat-owning women singing along with Meryl and Pierce.
I eventually overcame Hall's imitation of Allen to marvel at her perfect American accent and ability to play a short, neurotic New Yorker, even at 5'9". Patricia Clark was perfect in her limited screen time playing a woman trapped in a loveless life of quiet desperation. Scarlett Johansson, I think she was saying something but I'm sorry. Anytime she's on the screen, I have this humming in my ears, and breathing and time both stop.
Posted inFood & Drink
Blood in the Water: Industry Roundup for August 2008
Rumors of restaurant closures have been flying lately, especially downtown. There has been buzz that both Merenda and Deep are for sale and that Merenda will be closing by the end of the month. After many e-mails, questions at parties and grand speculation on the part of long time Bendites, I went to the only one that would know first hand: Owner and Executive Chef Jody Denton.
“There is no truth to these rumors-we are fine. We have made some adjustments, streamlining to make sure we get through this, but they (Merenda and Deep) are not for sale, nor are they closing.” Denton went on to say that as of December 2007 they have felt the crunch as business has gone down about 25 percent. Not believing in the quick turnaround some economists are predicting, Denton is strategizing as to how to withstand the high food costs and the loss of business without letting it affect his restaurants’ quality.
The rumors of 38 Degrees closing are true; the doors shut for good last month and the fate of the Northwest Crossing space is unknown at this point. Across the street, La Rosa’s new spot is still under construction, and the owners are hoping for a September opening.
Posted inFood & Drink
Blood in the Water: Industry Roundup for August 2008
Rumors of restaurant closures have been flying lately, especially downtown. There has been buzz that both Merenda and Deep are for sale and that Merenda will be closing by the end of the month. After many e-mails, questions at parties and grand speculation on the part of long time Bendites, I went to the only one that would know first hand: Owner and Executive Chef Jody Denton.
"There is no truth to these rumors-we are fine. We have made some adjustments, streamlining to make sure we get through this, but they (Merenda and Deep) are not for sale, nor are they closing." Denton went on to say that as of December 2007 they have felt the crunch as business has gone down about 25 percent. Not believing in the quick turnaround some economists are predicting, Denton is strategizing as to how to withstand the high food costs and the loss of business without letting it affect his restaurants' quality.
The rumors of 38 Degrees closing are true; the doors shut for good last month and the fate of the Northwest Crossing space is unknown at this point. Across the street, La Rosa's new spot is still under construction, and the owners are hoping for a September opening.
Posted inFood & Drink
Fire it Up: Flatbread a welcome addition in the Old Mill
It’s a community thing.For a while it was slim pickings when it came to eating in the Old Mill shopping district. You could get ice cream, some Italian food or an expensive plate of seafood, but that was about it. Then came the second phase of development and with it came Café Yumm!, Allyson’s Kitchen and the soon to open Pastina Pastaria. In the thick of it all, Flatbread Community Oven (FCO), an expansive pizza restaurant, has been open for about four weeks and is proving a popular option for Old Mill diners.
The menu at FCO revolves around the wood-fired pizza oven in the center of the open kitchen. Pizzas, flatbread and baked pastas predominate, but meal-sized salads and focaccia sandwiches are also available. The scenery isn’t bad either as outside tables look out over the Deschutes River and a man-made pond in the middle of the parking lot.
Kids are likely to love this place because they can make their own pizza. For $3.95, a small, tossed round of dough comes on a wooden board accompanied by ramekins of pizza toppings. Once your child has sufficiently massaged the sauce, cheese and pepperoni into the dough, it is whisked away only to return crisp and piping hot. The price includes a beverage and a large, still-warm cookie.