Month: January 2011
Portlanders take their food cart dining very seriously. Thus, when one of East Portland’s food carts was reported stolen yesterday, there was a hue and cry that crime and criminals had gone too far this time and taken the tacos right from our gaping mouths. That was yesterday. Today we’re happy to announce that the …
East Portland’s Lloyd Center Mall is a dimly lit, uncomfortably shaped and poorly designed mall. For that reason, this flash mob never finds the right place to strut their stuff while being heard and seen, but you have to give them an E for East Portland and for Effort. Still, the quarrelsome flamenco flash in …
“Weren’t Young Fresh Fellows more important in the grand scheme of things than Nirvana? And wasn’t Popllama more significant than SubPop? – East Portland Blog Critic’s Roundtable, Part 1 (This conversation has four parts.) Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 Through the 1980s a couple of different strains ran through …
This is for everyone who first heard of Jackie Wilson via Van Morrison’s “Jackie Wilson Said” but never got to hear the real Jackie Wilson. Here he is on The Ed Sullivan Show, January 21, 1962.
Mike Nesmith’s highest charting song, post-Monkees, was a surprisingly tender country ballad from 1970:
Thanks to Randy Rendfeld for this: The NPR interview with Colin Meloy of Portland band, the Decemberists, and their new album, The King is Dead (available as of 1/18/2011) may be heard here at the NPR website. And here’s Calamity Song, a nifty homage to Reckoning-era REM on the new album:
“What I find striking about this song is that it wasn’t written as a performance piece. Towser was famously challenged by his producer/manager Kit Lambert to fill up a blank 10 minutes of vinyl on their in-progress LP. He responded with this mini opera. I have vexed and divided feelings about the operas — mini, …
”It’s everything you love in a game, and your Mom’s going to hate it…” This is a very clever advertisement which will sell lots of Dead Space 2 units to teenagers. It’s interesting to look at in the wake of all the recent discussion of pop culture influencing people to act violently in real life. …
This lady should have won…
It’s all here, part of a contest of Newberry Award Winning children’s books each dramatized in videos of 90 seconds or less: “A Wrinkle In Time” In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.
Note to criminals in Seattle: dress up in a green and gold suit before going on a crime spree, then everyone will think Phoenix Jones did it. Phoenix himself had to have been affected by popular culture because what rational adult would suit up and play Batman unless every movie had superheroes in them. Then …
An excellent Dengue Fever montage of sound check and live performance:
There are few experiences in life as exciting as attending a baseball game in October, when the outcome of a marathon season hangs in the balance. Despite the handicap of being a Giants fan of modest means, I had seen two such games in my life prior to last year. The latter, back in 2002, …
If we need to tell kids what math is useful as an adult, I would say percentages and how they relate to tipping and financing charges. Learn your percentages, kids. Take finance in college. Community Channel is the Youtube’s most popular Australian:
With Tragic Magic – Reflections On Power Pop Michael Chabon has once more proven himself to be my genius doppelganger, saying everything (and more) on a subject dear to me in a voice that is everything (and more) I’d hope mine to be. Being in the world with him at the same time removes any …
Not Van Morrison, but def. in the spirit of Van the Man… Thanks to BoingBoing:
”Rent” may seem like the most maudlin of guilty pleasures, on par with “Seasons in the Sun.” But, one of very few late-80s nostalgia vehicles, “Rent” hits the mark more often than, say, “St Elmo’s Fire.” Nothing evokes the 80s better than a musical about addiction, death, sex, mediocre art and moving Westward. Casual references …
I continue to choose not to speculate about the motives (or lack thereof ) or sanity (or lack thereof) of Jared Loughner. And I sadly wish I had been wrong in my speculation about the reactions of right and left to the cruel violence inflicted by Loughner and its sad aftermath. That there are those …
The NFC North is a division of the National Football League’s National Football Conference. It currently has three members: the Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, and Minnesota Vikings, with the Detroit Lions playing on the NFC North Junior Varsity. The Bears, Packers and Lions have been in the same division or conference since the NFL …
Clearly Nebulous avers “They keep talking about “all the rhetoric” — but they never cite a single specific example.” I appreciate the anxiety and in my original post I had hoped to avoid exactly the tit-for-tat left right citations and actually suggest that it is much more complicated. But since CN seems honestly unsure here, …
On Saturday January a gunman in Tucson Arizona shot and critically wounded US Representative Gabrielle Gifford and killed US Federal District Court Judge John M. Roll, and he also killed five others and wounded another 15. This news interrupted my Saturday afternoon, otherwise filled with the improbable Seahawk’s victory over the Saints, in the way …
“Or… I guess,… just possibly,… it was the father in me, despite my weaknesses, flaws, and short-comings, hoping that someday I might live up to being such a hero figure to my kid – perhaps even passing down just a tiny bit of such true grit.” The Parallel Convergence Zone Mike and Jeff work together …
When you see this, you can’t wait for her to grow up and rock the figure skating world. She’s a gamechanger, right here:
Upon hearing of East Portland Blog’s celebration of 2011 as “The Year of Van Morrison,” Tim Midgett registered his discontent with Van by sending me this link to a WFMU blog entry about Van’s curious 1967 recording sessions undertaken for Bang Records. http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/09/van_morrisons_c.html The entry is a few years old, and at one time it …
Obvious thoughts RE: “Year of Van Morrison” contrivance: 1. In high school everyone seemed to think that Morrison’s last name was “Van Morrison,” just like an older relative of Van Halen. 2. Mr. Morrison is very short, but this physical limitation did not prevent him from taking an adult-sized helping from the Communal Cocaine Pile …
Portland, OR January 2, 2011 – Ending months of negotiation and unbridled industry speculation, EastPortlandBlog.com announced today its decision to declare 2011 to be the “Year of Van Morrison” in East Portland, on the internet, and across the world. “We are delighted that our year-long celebration of Van Morrison, the man, his music and his …
I realize that When the Clock Strikes (1961) is at best a campy post-noir tribute but I really like it and come back to it every now and then. It’s an oddly compelling little timepiece (groan). The female lead, Merry Anders, was born in Chicago in 1934 of Swedish, German and Irish extraction. She had …