True Romance: Choke finds an unexpected vein of sweetness in the creator of Fight Club.

Posted inCulture

True Romance: Choke finds an unexpected vein of sweetness in the creator of Fight Club.

Mike Bookey

Shakespeare in love. Clark Gregg did it. I wouldn't recommend trying, but he did it. This is Chuck Palahniuk we're talking about, after all.

The creator of Fight Club.

The nihilist.
The gross-out artist.
The
guy who famously or infamously or anecdotally inspired multiple people
to drop over in a dead faint at readings of a story about heinous
masturbation-inspired mishaps.
That grotesque, pathetic, twisted guy.
But
Clark Gregg did it. He took Palahniuk's Choke as screenwriter and
director and found another vein. Buried beneath the blasphemy and the
bodily fluids and the self-loathing was a story about redemption.
About recovery.
About love.
Clark
Gregg turned Chuck Palahniuk into a romantic. Or maybe he just pulled
back the covers to expose the romantic that was already there. It's
certainly not easy to see at first in the tale of Victor Mancini (Sam
Rockwell), who's messed up in so many ways that it's hard to know where
to begin. He attends 12-step meetings for sex addiction with his best
friend and compulsive masturbator Denny (Brad William Henke), but
pretty much only so he can pick up women. He visits with his ailing
mother Ida (Anjelica Huston), but her dementia has reached the point
where she doesn't even recognize him. And while he has a job at a
colonial theme park, he supplements his income by shoving food down his
throat at restaurants, finding someone to save his life, and becoming
the beneficiary of his newfound saviors' sense of connection.

Posted inFood & Drink

Happy Hour: Astro Lounge

Alice Finer

What’s the ideal menu for a seven-year-old’s birthday? How about hush
puppies and pigs in blankets? Pizza and chips and dip? Sounds perfect,
though when the party’s for the seventh anniversary of Astro
Lounge-Bend’s one-shop answer to Northwest Portland or Williamsburg,
Brooklyn-you can bet that those old favorites come with an attitude and
a formidable playlist. Astro Lounge, once largely a waiting room for
its neighboring restaurant Marz, is all grown up, independent, and
serving one of the best happy hour deals in town.

Posted inFood & Drink

Happy Hour: Astro Lounge

Alice Finer

What's the ideal menu for a seven-year-old's birthday? How about hush
puppies and pigs in blankets? Pizza and chips and dip? Sounds perfect,
though when the party's for the seventh anniversary of Astro
Lounge-Bend's one-shop answer to Northwest Portland or Williamsburg,
Brooklyn-you can bet that those old favorites come with an attitude and
a formidable playlist. Astro Lounge, once largely a waiting room for
its neighboring restaurant Marz, is all grown up, independent, and
serving one of the best happy hour deals in town.

Posted inFood & Drink

Island Hopping: Bend’s Hawaiian dining expands with Aloha

Mike Bookey

The full meal deal at Aloha.There may not be enough inexpensive meals downtown for some people’s
taste, but that’s not a problem in eastside “Costco Hub.” The corner of
Hwy 20 and 27th Street has a bevy of low-priced options, some worth
checking out and some worth skipping. Since February one of those
worthy spots has been Aloha Café.

Sandwiched between Super Cuts and
China Doll in the Crossroads Plaza strip mall, Aloha Café greets you
with neon hula girls and surfboards hanging from the wall. The menu is
posted overhead and the ordering is done at the counter. The food comes
up almost instantly and is brought out to your table. This is no-frills
eats that will fill you up and not break the bank.
The choices
are beef, chicken and pork with sides of white or brown rice, yakisoba
noodles, coleslaw, chips and potato-macaroni salad. There are a variety
of “mix-plates” with a number of meats and sides and even Da Big Kahuna
($11.75), a sample of everything that’s enough to share.

Posted inFood & Drink

Island Hopping: Bend’s Hawaiian dining expands with Aloha

Mike Bookey

The full meal deal at Aloha.There may not be enough inexpensive meals downtown for some people's
taste, but that’s not a problem in eastside "Costco Hub." The corner of
Hwy 20 and 27th Street has a bevy of low-priced options, some worth
checking out and some worth skipping. Since February one of those
worthy spots has been Aloha Café.

Sandwiched between Super Cuts and
China Doll in the Crossroads Plaza strip mall, Aloha Café greets you
with neon hula girls and surfboards hanging from the wall. The menu is
posted overhead and the ordering is done at the counter. The food comes
up almost instantly and is brought out to your table. This is no-frills
eats that will fill you up and not break the bank.
The choices
are beef, chicken and pork with sides of white or brown rice, yakisoba
noodles, coleslaw, chips and potato-macaroni salad. There are a variety
of "mix-plates" with a number of meats and sides and even Da Big Kahuna
($11.75), a sample of everything that’s enough to share.

Posted inMusic

Sequels Don’t Always Suck: The Stage Names-Okkervil River

Mike Bookey

Austin-based Okkervil River's release The Stage Names, a beautifully crafted album discussing the obsession with celebrity and populated with "mid-level bands," washed-up porn stars, and poets jumping off bridges, was on several Best Of lists for 2007.
The Stand Ins is the sequel to that album-further expanding on the idea of life for those slightly outside of the spotlight. Is the idea of fame, a public face, and the emptiness of acclaim enough to fill two albums full of songs? Well, when the songs are written by Will Sheff, yes.

Posted inMusic

Talking with the Maestro: Taj Mahal arrives in town and drops a solid new record

The Source Staff

They don’t make cars or blues heroes like this anymore.Taj Mahal has been playing his brand of blues music for 40 years now
and you might be inclined to think he's slowed down a stride or two
during that time. But after a 20 minute chat, the 66-year-old legendary
musician seems as quick as ever and endlessly excited about his
upcoming tour.

Taj is stopping off in Bend as part of a tour (along
with his trio) supporting his new album, Maestro, which is slated to
hit the shelves on September 30, just two days after his show at the
Tower Theatre. The album is a 12-track, wide-reaching collaborative
project meant to celebrate Taj's 40 years laying down music. A
collection of collaborations from an aging blues man might, on the
surface, sound trite - the late-career collaboration-heavy disc is
almost a right of passage - but thankfully, Taj has come through with a
record not only impressive because of who plays on the cuts (Los Lobos,
Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Ziggy Marley, Phantom Blues Band) but because
they are genuinely good songs. And Taj seems to know they're good.

Posted inMusic

Setting its Roots: Bend Roots Revival gets bigger but stays free in year three

The Source Staff

It’s big, it’s three-days, it’s local and hey, it’s free…Bend Roots ’08.I like to think of fall as "locals time" here in Bend. The tourist flow
lessens and remains slow until the snow starts falling and that means
it's time for the people who actually live here to get out on the town.
And our music scene follows the same model - the big-bill amphitheater
shows are done for the year and the other out-of-town tours will soon
slow as well. So, thus, it's time for the local artists to get their
time in the spotlight.

In only its third year, the Bend Roots Revival
has solidified itself as the quintessential who's-who gathering of
Bend's musical community - well, at least the acts that fall somewhere
near the definition of "roots music"…sorry punk and metal bands. This
weekend brings three days of music to the Westside for what Bend Roots
director (and captain of local jamsters The Mostest) calls a "block
party." And it pretty much is a block party - and it's also one of the
best parties, block, birthday or otherwise, of the entire year if
you're a local music fan.

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