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…

December 23, 2013

Sabrage: Pomp and Physics

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Leo Daedalus, Host of The Late Now, sabres a bottle of sparkling wine at the PDX Magazine Issue #3 Launch Party at Lightbar on Dec 13, 2013. Also pictured Ross Blanchard, PDX Magazine Editor-in-chief. Photo by Miri Stebivka By Ross Blanchard When we open up a bottle of sparkling wine this holiday season, most of us don’t consider slashing off the top of it with a large blade. Most of us also are not on horseback, do not carry a sabre, and are not celebrating battlefield victories. These apparently were minor details on two separate occasions within the last month where I’ve witnessed the beheading of bottles of bubbly with chef’s knives. “Sabrage” as the practice is called, may have started with Napoleon Bonaparte’s cavalry officers in the late 18th Century and is far from a practical way to get at a bottle’s contents, not to mention a wasteful practice. But this violent decapitation of the delicate, curved neck of a bottle is rather dramatic at a party, its precious contents, its life blood, gushing wastefully onto the floor. While our inner-Hussar thinks only of the impetuous flair and danger of the swinging knife and the flying glass that brings cheers from party-goers, the next morning, staring at the empty bottle, its cork and…

December 18, 2013

J is for Jelly Jar

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J is for Jelly Jar This is what you shall do: eat the jam. Keep Mason jars for ice water, or in sickness, tea of nettle and cinnamon, lemon slices, honey. The grain? Yes, too. Bourbon is a tireless physician. — Dena Rash Guzman Above: Self-portrait by Dena Rash Guzman.

December 18, 2013

The Words Market

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“I’m leaving.” Tilda spoke defensively. “Everybody’s leaving. The Words Market is in shambles, everything’s been sold.” She appeared confused by her terror and clutched nervously at the office pens. “People are now reporting serious trouble speaking at all. I must leave. I must collect my… chil… ki… drens…”

December 17, 2013

‘Tis the Seasoning: My Blood-Red Passion for Borscht

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Sometimes the borscht was as perfect as it gets, and you’d close your eyes and suddenly your heart would be transported through hundreds of years of history via the beet time machine. You always knew you were eating something very, very special.

December 16, 2013

Flagon & Vine: Shimmer – Pirate Négociant

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“We’re trying to get people to open their eyes,” Shimmer explains. “They’re drinking mass-produced, chaptalized (sweetened), citrified (fruit extract added) wines. Some wineries even put oak powder in some of these wines, so you taste a barrel that was never there!”