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Wednesday, April 28, 2010Hiatus...
Things have been slow around these parts over the past several weeks, mostly due to my heavy courseload for spring term. To further complicate matters, Blogger is doing away with FTP publishing, which will prevent future posts from getting published on Another Portland Blog unless I radically modify things. Dealing with this dillema or a transition to Wordpress is a project that's bound to be rife with headaches and require hours of heartache and hassles.
So I've decided to put the blog on hold until after finals in June when I'll have time to whip everything around here back into shape. Until then, there's always Another Portland Blog's Twitter feed if you're interested in hearing about exciting daily activities like eavesdropping on people in Stumptown and/or photos of any funny bumperstickers I come across. Until then, take care AND STAY OUT OF MY RUM! Labels: tech support
Friday, April 09, 2010I joined a kickball team...
It could be argued that this another "inevitability" that comes with residing in Portland. If you live in this city long enough, you're bound to allow pub quizzes, coffeeshop loitering and kickball into your life, at some point. At least I've held off on adopting a pug.
Joining a kickball team is a lot like joining a fraternity. A co-ed fraternity where everyone is between the ages of 21 and 50 and gathers together on Sundays to drink cheap beer, cover themselves in mud, chase around rubber balls and gossip about one another. There's more personal drama wafting around my league than 40 years worth of Days of Our Lives episodes. At times I feel like I need a flow chart to keep up with the rivalries and track of who's sleeping with who and why one Girl X refuses to talk to Guy Y. Like a frat house, there's feuds, legends surrounding longtime members and enough inappropriate nicknames to keep former members of the Bush cabinet giggling well into Obama's second term.  Take, for example, one charismatic team captain who uses the league as his own personal "lady buffet" and finds himself continually struggling to keep his various lovers from engaging in fist fights in the middle of games. I could bring up some further anecdotes but there's always the chance that a teammate will come across this blog post. If that happened, I'd get cut from the team, or worse yet, spend the rest of the season with the nickname "That Asshole Blogger." Regardless, I'm sure that by mid-season someone who has been missing for the last five seasons will mysteriously return one afternoon to retake his position as an outfielder, proving wrong the assumption that he died in a tragic taxi bike accident in the Pearl District. And I guess there's also the camaraderie, the friendly competition and the occasional complimentary polish dog. All in all, this old Onion article does sum up all the whole phenomenom of hipster sports leagues pretty well. Labels: sports
Thursday, April 08, 2010Quasi and Explode Into Colors at the Doug Fir (March 27th)
School is back in session, which means most of my time lately has been devoted to reading case law and trying to figure out why a certain professor didn't order enough books for a class on political theory.
But I did see Quasi and Explode into Colors back on March 27th at the Doug Fir Lounge. Quasi was having what could be simply described as a "shit night." Lead singer and guitarist Sam Coomes couldn't get his guitar to stay in tune causing drummer Janet Weiss to snap at him a few times. All in all, they were acting like miffed ex-lovers....oh, right, they used to be married to one another.  At one point, Coomes became so frustrated that he threw his guitar at the wall and opted to play a few piano songs instead. Janet's snippy response: "well, I guess we're going to have to pay someone to tune your guitar for you on this tour!" They got through the rest of the set and someone backstage gave him another guitar to use. They closed with "It's Raining," one of my personal favorites, and a ho-hum cover of "I Can See for Miles." The opening act, local band Explode Into Colors, was a total surprise and played a great, short set. With two percussionists and a female lead singer, they sounded sort of like a tribal Yeah Yeah Yeahs with some old black magic from the Doors sprinkled on top. Definitely a band to keep an eye on. Labels: music
Tuesday, March 30, 2010A snapshot from yesterday's protest
Friday, March 26, 2010Roadhouse: The Play
Roadhouse: you may think that this meme jumped the shark when Family Guy devoted half of an episode to mocking the 1989 Patrick Swayze action flick. Yeah, well, there's still some life left in the dang thing. Road House: The Play proves it.
Uhhhhh.....that totally wasn't a riff on the untimely passing of "The Swayze" last fall, I swear.  The movie transitions to the stage pretty well and the local cast does a great job of capturing the goofy spirit of the source material. It isn't an outright parody, although Portland Mercury editor Wm. Stephen Humphrey does play the part of Carrie, the sex-starved bartendress. And a guitarist on the side of the stage plays "She's Like the Wind" twice. And the actor playing Dalton hams up the tai chi scene. And the narrator gets it on with Wade at one point. And....all right, fine. It's a parody. Anyway, it's a fantastic production, even if the cast resorts to using a panda bear costume for the *polar* bear scene. Yeah, yeah, we fans can be total asshole sticklers about these sort of details.
Part of the reading selection at the Woodstock Papachino's
Thursday, March 25, 2010Cats singing. And dancing. Mass hysteria
Sometime in the '90s, my then 13 year-old sister Shanna convinced my parents to let her adopt a kitten. He was a "tuxedo kitty." I'm sure you've seen the type before. Black all over with the exception of a large, white spot across his chest and stomach. Add a red collar and they're ready to go for a night on the town.
Having just seen a touring Broadway production of Cats at the Civic Auditorium, she insisted on naming the kitten "Magical Mr. Mistoffolees." While completely lovable, he never quite managed to live up to his namesake. Instead of being adept at magic and card tricks, his primary skills were limited to jumping on the kitchen counter, gorging himself on Science Diet and making weird, gurgling noises. Within a year, Magical Mr. Mistoffolees weighed over 15 pounds and only Shanna could pronounce his name properly. 
Labels: theater
Thursday, March 18, 2010Snapshots of an early spring in Portland, sans context
Tuesday, March 16, 2010Scenes from the 2010 Portland Urban Iditarod
On Saturday the annual Portland Urban Iditarod was....run? Staggered through? Ok, I can't come up with an appropriate verb. Nevertheless, here's some snapshots from this year's beer-fueled hipster melee:
 One of the most inspired entrants this year was the Last Supper cart. A member of their team was wandering through the crowd at the race's final stop with a "magic" water-into-wine jug, offering to perform miracles for anyone with an empty cup.  Remember Spaceballs? I remember Spaceballs. 
 And who could forget the roaring Godzilla cart and the big lizard's, uh, "little lizard"? The Hello Kitty ornaments were definitely an inspired touch.  This was my second urban iditarod and I'm still not too clear on how the rules work. Or if there are rules. I guess this guy was the MC and determined when the teams would stop, say, breaking windows on the second floor of the Barracuda Bar and Lounge and race off to their next destination. He did have a whistle with him. Anyway, click here for an obligatory Flickr gallery and/or over here for photos from last year's iditarod.
Friday, March 12, 2010The South Park Blocks
For me, the past few weeks have mostly been a blur of take-home finals, essays, coffee shops and the PSU library. This doesn't leave a lot to blog about. The South Park Blocks, which run through the middle of the Portland State campus, do break up the monotony though. They're the closest thing the school has to a plaza or a courtyard. As with any school, there's the "campus characters," activists and others that keep things interesting and they all tend to hang out in the Park Blocks.
One bloke who immediately springs to mind is "Bible Guy." He's heavy-set, bearded and wears a multi-colored hat. I don't know what his story is but I've heard that he's a member of "Jews for Jesus." Bible Guy hangs around outside of the Smith Memorial Union, loudly preaching the gospel according to himself. On sunny days he can draw a crowd of dozens and graduate students in the school's science department love to bicker with him. On the way over to the Market Street Pub the other day, I paused to watch one of them scream at Bible Guy about the true age of the planet. The graduate student became so frustrated that he began screaming, "there are rocks on Earth that are, unequivocally, millions of years old!" Bible Guy took this time to meditate until his debater ran out of steam before launching into a passage from the New Testament. There's other odd sights and moments that make me wish I had my iPhone's camera drawn and ready to fire as I rush between classes. One morning, I encountered a preschool teacher leading a line of tots past a "Have You Hugged Your Local Abortion Doctor Lately?" kiosk being hosted by two students from Planned Parenthood. This past Wednesday, the first thing that caught my eye when I set foot on campus was a middle-aged gentleman pushing a stroller with a large, plush hot-dog sitting in the seat. Trotting alongside him was a dachshund in a white sweater. Behind them, six adorable puppies were rushing to catch up. It was another moment in need of further context but I didn't feel up to the task of running after this "Dachshund Pied Piper" to ask him what was up. Yesterday, a student activist dressed-up as a tree growled at me as I headed off in search of coffee.  I'm much better at capturing photos of stationary objects, like this fire-hydrant/toilet art display that someone left on top of a manhole cover. There's also this guy, who rolled onto campus last week in a Winnebago. He was with a hippie jam band that had been hired to play a set at a student protest over incorporating the Oregon University System. As I walked up, he spat a cigarette butt at me. Undaunted, I asked him if I could take his picture. He obliged and even smiled for the shot.  Labels: weird
Sunday, March 07, 2010Oscar predictions
Last year I went 10 for 16. I can do better this year, I just know it...
Labels: movies
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