January 15, 2014

Crawdads and Pizza: Exploring Portland’s Indie Comics

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by Ross Blanchard This month we’re adding cartoons to the PDX Magazine line-up. This often over-looked genre blends literature and art, and its subject matter slapstick to heartbreak. Comics vary in length from single-panel cartoons to full-length novels to serials with ever-continuing story lines. On the next few pages, you’ll find excerpts from Pizza Gun (Below) and Crawdads Welcome, two Portland-based publications available at local comic book shops and online. Ezra Butt, Crawdads Welcome Ezra Butt is a 26-year-old Portland-born cartoonist currently living in Phoenix, Oregon, near Ashland. He has self-published three collections of cartoons titled Crawdads Welcome. “While I would describe myself as a cartoonist,” Butt says, “all of my work is fueled by an intense love for 18th and 19th century Naturalist artists. Beyond that, animals and plants inspire me more than any human artist I could name.” The naturalist influences on Crawdads is evident in Butt’s intricate illustrations, which have a level of detail more comparable to an Audubon or a Charles D’Orbigny print than to the typical comic strip. Crawdads characters are collection of flora and fauna who discuss love, current events, politics, and whatever else is spurred by Butt’s imagination. Tigers and peacocks live together in…

January 12, 2014

White Wine: The Interview

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by Mugroso There’s the slice of the wine world that considers white wine a “palate cleanser” for the more challenging and impactful reds. The equivalent of mouthwash? Really? Or is this just another slight pointed at these vintner blondes? To answer these charges, we asked a cross-section of worldly whites to sit down for an interview and answer for the state of their ilk in this modern war of hue and esteem. This group interview was conducted on a foggy late morning at the confluence of the Yamhill-Carlton and Ribbon Ridge AVAs, the valley running away from us as we sat high atop the vineyards below. These “ladies” all brought their own bottle to share and taste, but mostly to help get them through this interruption in their daily routine. The interview format was an ensemble version of the Proust Questionnaire, but those results are annotated here for economy and somnambulistic avoidance. The Interview: MUGROSO:  Good morning, ladies. Thank you for taking the time from your busy schedules to meet and discuss the state of white wine in modern society, and perhaps to dispel some myths around modern whites. I know you are each very busy, so let’s get right…

January 12, 2014

Mole Amarillo

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Culinary travelogue by Mike Allen I was running the camarero ragged with my thirst. “¿Cómo estás hoy, todavía enfermo?” Daniel asked one day, partially blocking my view of the Pacific. “Better, mucho mejor,” I said around the straw of my third, or fourth or fifth, michelada. “¿No quieres hacer algo más mientras te encuentras aquí?” I puzzled on that. I wasn’t sure what else he would have me do. I was traveling alone, without a car, still weak, in a tiny coastal town with no phones and maybe two bars, both of which were usually vacant. “¿Cómo qué? Hay todo aquí mismo. Hay cerveza, hay pizza, hay pescado a la Veracruzana.” An old guy walked by on the beach, pushing a steel cooler on wheels with a parasol above it. “Helados ricos: fresa, coco, chocolate!” he called to the fifteen-or-so pale Germans, Scandinavians and estadounidenses sitting around on the sand and in chairs, drinking and watching the surf roll in. “Hay ice cream,” I added. “Todavía no sé… Pero tengo algunos amigos aquí también,” Daniel laughed, turning to the water. He’s got some friends? I wasn’t sure what that meant. He loped down through the surf, dove in, and swam…

January 12, 2014

The Classical Music Kama Sutra

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By Christopher Corbell Illustration “Immodest Mussorgsky” by Ezra Butt When I was 13, neglected, and stoned, music began to take over my life. Though I’d been fascinated with classical music from an early age I had no support to learn it, and it was already much too late for me to be a prodigy by Suzuki-school-kindergarten or even junior-high-marching-band standards. Not yet aware of that shortcoming, in my own meandering escapism from dysfunctional-family chaos I’d taken to guitar and gone beyond the Beatles’ songbook and easy Jimmy Reed blues licks, giving myself to the dark journey: Black Sabbath’s Paranoid on scratchy vinyl. Hazy hour after hour I’d wrestle to master by ear the next phrase of Tony Iommi’s solo in “Iron Man,” worked out on my $50 Univox electric guitar. I didn’t have a proper amp, so I’d plug into an old tape deck and max out the recording level gain to get a really awful sounding distortion through the stereo. Those were the last of my stoner days; I was to get my shit together and clean up at 14. The music love would continue, on to Zeppelin, Rush, and Zappa with some punk and darkwave detours, meanwhile also…

January 12, 2014

The Four-Hour Megalomaniac

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Unreliable narrative by Leo Daedalus Illustration by Allison Bruns Ah, the new year! ‘Tis the season for self-improvement, when the days grow brighter and the humiliations of the past year sink into the sweet mire of remorse. In these heady weeks of burgeoning hope, impossible is for losers and realists. In burgeoning spirit, I recently picked up a copy of Skip Serkiss’s runaway bestseller, The Four-Hour Megalomaniac. Actually, I didn’t so much pick it up as find myself regaining consciousness in an ice-filled bathtub in a seedy hotel in Guadalajara with a scar on my abdomen and a copy of the book perched on a nearby wastebasket. With nothing else on my agenda (I’d already run through the alphabet twice in an unsuccessful effort to remember my own name) I picked up the book and flipped nonchalantly until I found a pen-and-ink drawing of a man in an ice-filled bathtub in what the caption confirmed was a seedy hotel in Guadalajara. This was promising. I should mention that the book weighs 9.6 kilograms and is bound in cast iron. So it does present a physical challenge to folks just recuperating from back-room surgery in an ice bath. This is a…

January 12, 2014

DeBoer. Himself

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By Jef Krohn Photos by Miri Stebivka If there’s one thing that can definitively be said about Brent DeBoer—drummer for the Dandy Warhols and front man of Immigrant Union—it’s that he truly is the epitome of a vintage-style rock star. DeBoer showed up to our interview directly from the late 1960s, complete with a velvet blazer, well-worn second-hand jeans, and light brown suede boots that look like they fell off a wagon during an episode of Little House on the Prairie. The only thing that takes attention away from his wild afro-style hairdo is the charismatic grin that seems to take over every one of his expressions. After a brief introduction, DeBoer took a minute to show me around the Odditorium, the Dandy’s private office/recording-studio/party-palace and the setting for our interview. He started opening doors, nonchalantly introducing one eclectic room after the next, and it become apparent that his calm, cool demeanor belies his eccentric and seemingly extravagant lifestyle. From the “Organ Lounge” (an orange velvet-walled room filled with antique organs, candles, lace curtains, and a bar) to the state-of the art modern styled recording studio, to the well stocked commercial-grade rustic gourmet kitchen, to the gigantic high-school gymnasium-style practice…

January 8, 2014

Death Takes Pilates

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By Mykle Hansen Illustrations by Ezra Butt Death has a thing for a beautiful Yoga/Pilates instructor named Brenda. Death wants to run away with her to the valley below. He wants her to perish poignantly before her golden years, because she is so hot. Death has never felt quite this way about a woman before. He is also somewhat concerned about his abs. At the movement studio, Death feels stupid in spandex. Warm, flexible women surround him. Steam rises from them like fresh-baked bread. They open their chakras, they work their cores. But Death has no core—only stiff bones, dusty ligaments, and an ominous cloud of doom. It looms in the far corner, hovering over his street clothes, threatening rain. The women ignore it, and him, and breathe. At the forefront of the room is Brenda, hot. She does the plank, the pigeon, the dead Frenchman, the laughing cow. She divides her abs into eight separate regions and works each of them in turn—then again, counterclockwise. Warmly and confidently she directs the steamy roomful of women to spread their legs and ululate. Watching all this, Death gets a hernia. Eleven worried women ride with him in the ambulance. Their names…