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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 1, 2006)
DECEMBER 1, 2006 justiQUtias alternative events for men younger than 30, presents a music night where you can bring your favorite music and a DJ will play and mix tunes. (7-9 pm RSVP to 503-288-6103 or www lovetribe, org/menspirit.) FRI • DEC. 8 YoHo's Benevolent Society, which hosts fun and creative Cinema 21 screens a special 25-minute version of the Darcelle documentary Queens of Heart: Community Therapists in Drag followed by a reception hosted by Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale at Bluehour. (4 pm screening, 616 NW 21st Ave. 5:30 pm reception, 250 NW 13th Ave. $10-$25 from Ticketmaster.) Someday Lounge followed by Hail Santa!, the culmination of the Cacophony Society's annual SantaCon/Santa Crawl/Santarchy, with special Christmas music cooked up especially for Kris Kringle by some of Portland's naughtiest music acts. (9 pm-midnight music [$7], midnight-230 am Santa (free) 125 NW Fifth Ave) The Egyptian Club presents Hip-Hop Fridays with DJ Brooklyn once a month. (9 pm 3701SE Division St $4.) Come to the Eagle for some ass-slapping fun during the monthly kink night Queer Fetish. (9 pm-2:30 am. 1300 W Burnside St $3.) Queer DJ Set It and Forget It spins at Crush. (9 pm. 1400 SE Morrison St.) Life coach Jill Nelson shows you how to remove the obstacles to real joy during the free seminar Bringing Joy to Life at Metropolitan Community Church of Portland. (10 am-1 pm 2400 NE Broadway Register at 503-730-9187.) Splendora of the punk drag troupe Sissyboy hosts Queer Quistmas at Mississippi Pizza Pub with her freaky friends Sissyboy's Kaj-Anne Pepper, doing Christmas based per- 1 formance art and storytelling; the Drunken Princess Girl, I Aura hosts Salon Q a monthly mixer for men and women to retelling the tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears and put socialize in a smoke-free environment. (7 pm 1022 W ting a sexy spin on " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas”; : Burnside St.) singer/songwriter Sara King, performing a Christmas med ley and a few originals; and Tipsy Genius, a musical and Q LAND and LoveTribe present the Men’s Meditation storytelling act created by Sissyboy's Fannie Mae and Group every second and fourth Tuesday. Relieve stress, Zebra. (10 pm. 3552 N Mississippi Ave. $5.) feel calmer and more focused, and be more creative and connected to your natural flow. (7:30-9:30 pm. RSVP to 503-223-8822 or wwwlovetribe org/menspirit.) Bridgeport United Church of Christ hosts the fifth annual Mindful Gifts Bazaar featuring meaningful and affordable gifts from dozens of non profits (including p:ear and Portland Habitat for Humanity) representing their services or projects. (10 am- 4 pm. 621 NE 76th Ave.) Doug Fir Lounge presents Crafty Wonderland, featuring more than 40 hip artists and designers selling their work as well as a do-it-yourself table to teach shoppers how to make shadow puppets. The first 100 people through the door will receive goodie bags filled with awesome crafty surprises! Repeats Dec. 17 with a raffle to benefit Goose Hollow Shelter—and learn how to make a free snow globe at the DIY table. (11 am-4 pm. 830 E Burnside St ) Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party present their Holiday Craft Bazaar through Dec. 10 at the Bread and Roses Center featuring handmade crafts at affordable prices including knit scarves, gift cards and multiethnic baked goods. (10 am-6 pm Saturday, 10 am- 4 pm Sunday. 819 N Killingsworth St.) DJs Harmony, Beyonda and Saffronica lay down the Drag punk Kaj-Anne Pepper entertains Dec. 9 at Queer Quistmas. Q-LAND and LoveTribe present the Men’s Dating Lab, a support group for finding practical strategies to strength en emotional and physical intimacy. (7-9:30 pm RSVP to 503-223-8822 or www.lovetribe org/menspirit.) Rose Emperor XXXIII Don Hood and Rose Empress XLVIII Dawna Creation officially assume their reign during Investitures 2006/Prince tr Princess Ball at Embers 16 pm. 110 NW Broadway $12.) hottest world, Latin, house and old-school beats during Tart, a monthly party for queer girls at Holocene. (4 pm 1001 SE Morrison St $5.) Confluence: The Willamette Valley Mixed GALA Chorus presents Wild Bells at Unitarian Umversalist Fellow ship of Corvallis. Repeats Dec. 9 at Unitarian Umversalist Congregation of Salem. (7:30 pm. 2945 NW Circle Blvd, Corvallis. 5090 Center St NE, Salem $12-$15.) SAT • DEC. 9 Can you get HIV from a blow job? What about other sexu ally transmitted infections? Come to the Men's Wellness Center for To Spit or Swallow, a frank talk about the risks involved with oral sex and how to reduce them. Ask a pan el of outreach specialists and STI/HIV professionals your "burning" questions. (7-8:30 pm. 928 SW Stark St.) followed by an evening sale with prices ranging from $100 to $250. (5-9 pm. 333 NE Hancock St.) The School and Community Reuse Action Project hosts its fifth annual Holiday Bazaar and Bakesale featuring 15 local artisans who transform normally unwanted materials into cool, creative gifts. (11 am-6 pm. 3901A N Williams Ave.) The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art presents the fourth annual Prints for PICA at Studio 333. More than 100 of Portland s most revered artists (including queers Sarah Gottesdiener, Philip losca, TJ Norris, David Eckard and Storm Tharp) spend all day creating and printing, aLasting Impressions In the airy space of the Body Vox Studio, a man in his 50s, wearing a plain black T-shirt and matching sweat pants, is verbally molding the movements of the two dancers rehearsing in front of him. “Stay there, that’s great.... That’s too soon...now go, go, go—1 don’t think I’ve ever seen that,” says Jonathan Wolken, co-founder and artistic director of the renowned dance institution Pilobolus. It’s mid-November, and Wolken is spending one week in Portland working with the BodyVox dancers. Collaborating with Wolken on this piece is BodyVox co-director Jamey Hampton, who danced with Pilobolus from 1978 to 1982. During today’s rehearsal, the BodyVox company members—experienced dancers one and all—seem to be stretching their boundaries as Wolken discov ers what movements they are capable of doing successfully. One dancer shares that she is finding his style of intense, collaborative improvisation to be “sur prisingly tiring.” Wolken and Hampton’s joint piece is part of BodyVox’s ongoing First Impressions series, composed of new, short works from emerging and established choreographers. Other guest artists contributing to First Impressions: Volume Five are local dancer/choreographer Tere Mathem, comic filmmaker Mitchell Rose and gay Gus Van Sant director Gus Van Sant. The Oscar nominee is creating a performance piece fea turing the ZooBombers, the mini-bike fiends who race down the hill from the Oregon Zoo every Sunday. An important aspect of the First Impressions series is to give the BodyVox dancers an opportunity to express their creative sides by choreographing original works. Company members Lane Hunter, Eric Skinner and Anne Egan are making dances for the evening, as is BodyVox co-director Ashley Roland. Volume Five also includes company member Cristina Betts’ choreographic debut, a duet between two women. For Hampton, it’s a joy to see dancers come full circle by setting their movements as choreographers. He never fails to be surprised by the uniqueness of the dancers' work and their growth as artists. “The BodyVox garden is fecund,” he comments poetically. First Impressions V. 5 runs Dec. 7 to 16 at the BodyVox Studio, 1300 N.W. Northrup St. Tickets are $24-$30 from 503-229-0627. —Rebecca Ragain A jo A T wo Ton Boa and The Swallows perform at MON • DEC. 11 Bolivia "Dawson" Carmichaels and Miss Gay Oregon XXXIV Mylar Black host the first-ever Family Feud Bar Wars 2006 at Scandals. Tonight it's Silverado vs. C.C. Slaughters! (9 pm. 1125 SWStark St.) AErE premieres Wedding Wars, a romantic comedy that pops the question regarding gay marriage. (9pm.) TUE • DEC. 12 SUN • DEC. 10 WED • DEC. 13 Holocene presents The Mitzy Muffbaumer Christmas Special, a late-night variety show featuring Ursula Android and Jackie Hell of Seattle, Splendora and the Gender Fluids, music machines Do n Dudes with DJ Copy, Danny Damage of Caught in Candy, several DK PDX favorites and many comedic performers that will surely make you piss your pants with laughter! (8 pm. 1001 SE Morrison St $7-$10 sliding scale.) Act of War Despite some recent setbacks, gay marriage appears to be one of those formerly taboo, unthinkable subjects that’s edging ever closer to becoming a reality. In one of November’s most contested congressional races, loathsome homophobe Marilyn Musgrave barely edged out her opponent, Angie Paccione. Colorado Springs, Colo., is a notorious bastion of fundamental ist craziness, and Paccione favors gay marriage. On the cinematic front, we have A&.E Network’s movie on the subject, Wedding Wars, premiering 9 p.m. Dec. 11. In this made-for-TV feature, former sitcom and soap opera star John Stamos plays Shel, a gifted party planner who’s gay but not entirely out. (His parents don’t know.) His hunky brother Ben (Eric Dane) is straight, works for the governor of Maine (James Brolin) and is set to wed the gov’s daughter Maggie. Maggie adores Shel and wants him to plan the wed ding. Ben is nervous about it, fearing unwanted pub licity for his boss from his gay brother and dealing, none too subtly, with his own homophobia. Eric Dane (left) and John Stamos duke it out In the long tradition of clever queens selflessly over gay marriage in Wedding Wars. helping clueless straights find style (think the Fab Five most recently), Shel enthusiastically embraces his task, briskly disposing of the heteros’ tacky ideas about doves and karaoke in favor of pink tea roses, a tasteful string quartet and a gazebo on the edge of a lake. But Shel is less thrilled when he learns that rhe governor has come out publicly against gay marriage. Righteously angry that he’s creating for his brother something he can never experience himself, Shel decides to picket the governor’s mansion. Surprisingly, his one-man protest triggers a national gay strike, with seemingly every employed homosexual suddenly leaving their jobs in sympathy with Shel. Translation: Aunt Mary can’t get her hair done! The film’s scenic backdrop—Augusta, Maine—can’t compensate for shallow characterizations, dull dialogue and unconvincing plot twists. Shel is particularly problematic: First he’s the clever, sophisticat ed gay man; then, despite being politicized, he sputters and babbles when asked by a TV reporter why he’s protesting, unable to articulate his reasons. Hilarious, eh? The movie doesn’t bother to explain how this dubious martyr could inspire a national protest. An underlying nasty edge keeps surfacing, too—particularly in Ben’s schemes to end Shel’s strike. When Ben brings on the parents to shame Shel into stopping, it comes off as mean rather than farcically funny. Secondary characters are mostly appalling, particularly a gauche wedding planner who dresses in leopard skin and screeches R & B songs to accompany the nuptials. Has such a person ever existed? A&.E is promoting Wedding Wars as a romantic comedy with a serious underlying message about tol erance. But viewers—particularly gay viewers—might have trouble discerning the message or the humor in what is ultimately an adult version of an after-school special. —Gary Moms
