Over the past five years, the irreverent tandem Tim and Eric have cemented their status as the most polarizing force in viral comedy. If anyone tells you this duo’s humor is something that grows on you over time, they are full of shit. You either love these two and wholeheartedly embrace the bizarre universe they’ve carved in the annals of late-night comedy, or you think they are abrasive, talentless, and disgusting. Either way, fan and hater can agree on one thing: Tim and Eric are the death of comedy. It is the interpretation of that notion which creates the division among viewers.

To quote a good-humored friend of mine who happens to not like Tim and Eric: “They satirize things that don’t warrant satire.” This is true. Tim and Eric aren’t mocking popular culture, but instead mock the idiots in show business who abuse popular aesthetic and repackage it to the unquestioning consumer. They are obsessed with infomercials and unprofessionalism in general. While a typical comedian might skewer the latest shit-sandwich Johnny Depp film, Tim and Eric are more inclined to showcase the Johnny Depp impersonator who hasn’t a sliver of acting ability.

You can probably tell I am a diehard Tim and Eric fan, and while saddened by the end of their five-season ADHD sketch series “Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job” on Adult Swim, I was ecstatic to hear about their production of “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie.” It was only a matter of time before these two took their well-layered “Go fuck yourself, Hollywood” formula and dished it out in cinematic form. It is the perfect irony that these two ingeniously insincere auteurs actually had to collaborate with the studio system to produce a feature-length film.

As for the film itself: I was blown away, and can’t help but laugh to myself in class whenever I think about it. For my fellow chippies: do not expect a 90-minute episode of ‘Awesome Show,’ but instead something slightly different, but familiar enough. In some ways, T&E fans might have to unlearn some of their favorite facets of the universe of the TV show: it was especially hard for me to see John C. Reilly not playing fan-favorite Dr. Steve Brule, but his new character, Taquito, fits perfectly with what this film is trying to do. Reilly’s character is a nightmarish fusion of Chunk from the Goonies and Dickens’ Tiny Tim with some added sprinkles of severe mental retardation and malnutrition. It’s pure gold.

The story itself is a gnarly platter of rotting cheese, but it hurts so good. Tim and Eric, playing themselves, are in debt to studio bigwigs after the release of a their high budget, box-office disaster (foreshadowing?). The two flee Hollywood and decide to take over a run-down shopping mall. I couldn’t possibly explain what happens next, but let’s just say that it is the most aggressively satirical onslaught of the buddy comedy I have ever encountered. All the usual 90-minute storyline elements are there: prospects seem good initially, a romance triangle ensues, and of course the showdown with the villains at the climax. But it is the treatment of this vomit-inducing familiar narrative pattern that is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed. The love scene outdoes what Trey Parker and Matt Stone showed us in Team America: World Police.

So I’m sorry, I don’t think this film review has been helpful up to this point.

Should I see this movie?

Abso Lutely!

Is it good, or is it bad?

It’s Tim and Eric.

“Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” is available on-demand through iTunes, YouTube, Comcast and lots of other online sites. Check it out!

words JACK WASHER

According to the trailer, “A Dangerous Method” looked like a juicy historical drama dealing with a love triangle between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and some babe named Sabina, which would have been super kinky and awesome. Instead, all you really get is a film that is only slightly kinky and mostly just really long and winded deliberations about the theories of psychology. Despite the great performances by Michael Fassbender, Kiera Knightley, and Viggo Mortenson, David Cronenberg’s newest film about the beginnings of psychoanalysis falls short of accomplishing anything because I’m pretty sure nobody cares about psychoanalysis in the first place.

The film drops abruptly into the early 20th century where we are introduced to a heavily restrained and nearly frothing Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) as she’s being dragged to receive treatment from an up and coming psychoanalyst, Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender). Spielrein makes a hasty recovery and it soon becomes apparent to Jung that she has a natural talent for psychoanalysis herself, and soon enough a romantic relationship ensues. Viggo Mortenson portrays a picture perfect Sigmund Freud, who acts as the guiding hand to Jung’s research and represents the patriarch to the fledgling branch of science. The film follows the course of their relationship as they pretty much make up study psychology as they go along, and the eventual souring of their friendship as their opinions shift on the matter.

Adapted from Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure, it seems to me that Cronenberg was far too interested with fitting in all the historical accuracies and not enough with making a film that actually engages the viewer. First of all, he is dealing with a plot that stretches over a decade, a time span that any director would have trouble fitting into a two hour movie. Secondly, he incorporates Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Sabina Spielrein as they begin to explore the depths of the human unconscious whilst simultaneously creating a new medical practice. Then to top it all off, Cronenberg explores the romantic entanglements between the straight-laced Carl Jung and masochistic Sabina Spielrein. Each tangent has its own fascinating dynamic, however, when presented hand in hand the end result becomes an overstimulating and uninviting story line.

It’s not that this movie is necessarily bad, its just that if you’re not already a psychologist or even a psych student there’s really not much to take away from it. If you’re like me (not a psychologist) then I would recommend you watch this movie for all it really can be to the layman: a period piece. The sets are nice, I assume all the costumes are accurate, and they talk a little different, but I doubt that’s really enough to rock your world.

Now playing at the Bijou Art Cinemas.

It’s been a week of perpetual wetness, and the general state of things is soggy.  It is easy to slip into a dangerous state of chilled, gray sky irritability. It’s also easy to whip up a batch of tomato soup and slurp your sorrows away.

This roasted tomato and red pepper soup is warm and cozy, best spooned out of big mugs and sopped up with crusty bread. Roasting the tomatoes and peppers brings out their mellow sweetness, which is deepened and seductively enriched by whole garlic cloves and onions that roast cozily in the same pan.

The recipe made its way into my repertoire recently, and since the soupy weather looks as though it will persist, I see many batches in my future. The color of the soup is romantic, so if you get excited by Valentine’s day, it’s probably fitting for that. If not, it will warm your belly and make you feel safe and well, even if the gods and goddesses upstairs are crying incessantly.

Ingredients:
5-ish tomatoes (anything but Roma is usually safe)
2 red bell peppers
2 little yellow onions or 1 big one
5 garlic cloves
½ cup olive oil
salt, pepper, rosemary, basil

1.    OVEN TO 400˚
2.    CUT YOUR VEGGIES UP. Quarter the tomatoes and put them on a baking sheet, skins touching the pan. Cut the bell peppers into thick slices and wash them to remove their seeds. Place them skins up on the pan. Cut the onions in sixths, and peel the garlic cloves. They go on the pan too.
3.    SEASON THOSE PUPPIES. Drizzle the olive oil evenly over everything. Sprinkle salt and pepper across the vast red sea of veggies. Strew some fresh sprigs of rosemary and roughly chopped basil in the mix. Dried herbs work too, use about 3 tsp of each.
4.    GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY. Scootch everything around the pan, so no little tomato is left sad and hung out to dry.
5.    TURN UP THE HEAT. Put the pan in the oven for about 50 minutes. After every 15 minutes or so, check to make sure nobody’s getting too black. Turn them over if they are.
6.    PICK YOUR STOCK. Scrape the roasted beauties into a bowl, making sure you pour all the leftover juices from the pan in there too. Add 2 cups of any kind of stock, or use water with some more salt and pepper.
7.    BLEND. If you have an immersion blender, use it. If you don’t, you should. You can also use a regular blender (blend the soup in batches), or just mash everything up with whatever you can find (a potato masher?). If you added cold stock, you might need to put the soup in a pot on the stove for to heat it up again.
8.    BOWL TIME. I like to sprinkle Parmesan cheese on the soup and have some nice, hefty toast to clean my bowl with. Goat cheese is another option – a nice daub in the middle of the soup will get silky-soft and smooth.

VEGGIES, BEFORE AND AFTER:

This recipe was inspired by Heidi Swanson’s Roasted Tomato Soup from 101cookbooks.com.

words MARY-KATE MORONEY
art JULIAN WATTS

There’s something on the wind — the stale scent of tobacco and aftershave, the faint sounds of snoring and things you wish you’d never heard about your mother–and it can’t bust a move for shit. Why, it must be your dad, listening to rock music. Not just any rock music, but something grey-haired, something classic: dad-rock. What is it that defines this rock ‘n’ roll sub-genre? Where does it come from? Grab a cup-o-Joe and strap on a tie as we think back on a golden age, a time when our dads were not dads, and their dads were hardly rocking out to guitar-heavy ballads about love, drugs, and freedom.

Sometime around the mid-1950s, American folk music winked at the blues, who in turn showed a little skin, and after a little folkin’ around, rock ‘n roll was born. Of course, rock needed a fair amount of TLC, and extended family members country, pop, jazz, and R&B rose to the occasion. With so many influences, rock ‘n roll split and expanded into several sub-genres, one of which weaseled its way into the young hearts of, you guessed it, our dads. To this day, names like Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Tom Petty are still shredding at the front lines of dad-rock, beards and bald-spots at the ready. Assuming your dads, like mine, were coming of-age around the early 1970s, the times were ripe for music and freedom, inviting all young people to enjoy the fruits of live-performance music.

At the forefront of live music history is Woodstock ’69 — a big step for rock ‘n’ roll, glorifying festivals and the rockstar way of life. Included in the line-up were some dad-rock essentials: Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, Joe Cocker, and a few others. However, not all of the artists performing at Woodstock (although time appropriate) fall under the dad-rock umbrella. Acts such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Grateful Dead remain beside the mustached sub-genre, mainly because their music seems to have transcended the generational gap between dads and the rest of us.

While most important in characterizing dad-rock, the time period alone is not its sole defining factor. You know it’s dad-rock if it is decreasingly popular among successive generations, features long-haired white male guitarists, and has released more than one greatist hits album. We love it because it takes us back to a glorified time period that we never had the pleasure to experience first-hand. It reminds us of old men, horses (right?), and riding driver on dad’s lap.

So next time you chance a chuckle at your old man’s pitiful air-guitar, or abandon the radio at the first feeble chords of Neil Young’s “Old Man,” take a second to embrace the all-encompassing power of dad-rock, and before you know it you could be tappin’ a toe in your dad’s shoes.

STREAM THE OV’S FREE DAD-ROCK MIXTAPE

Dad-Rock 101 Mixtape

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Cotton Fields
The Who – Won’t Get Fooled Again
The Band – The Shape I’m In
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Teach Your Children
Neil Young – Old Man
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – Helpless
Steely Dan – Peg
Tom Petty – I Won’t Back Down
Jeff Beck – You Know What I Mean
The Eagles – Take It Easy
Eric Clapton – Lay Down Sally
John Mellencamp – Hurts So Good
Cat Stevens – Peace Train
The Guess Who – No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature
Old Crow Medicine Show – Take ‘Em Away
Bruce Springsteen – I’m On Fire

words MARGARET APPEL
photos CHRISTINE DONG

There is an all-too-familiar stretch of Interstate-5 that links so many of us from Eugene to Portland and the small towns in between — it’s roughly a two-hour drive that can fly by if you’re lucky enough to own a vehicle or get in on a friendly paddy wagon. Otherwise, you’re probably suffocating on the Greyhound, or making awkward small talk with the ride you weaseled out of someone via a desperate Facebook status plea. Regardless of your chosen chariot to PDX, it’s inevitable that at some point you will tear your eyes away from the thrilling game of Words With Friends you’ve got going and look out the window. There are a number of exits with small-towney names that will have you pondering how miserable that place must be, and the thought will then vanish from you like a fart in the I-5 wind.

Roadside attractions aren’t something you’ll generally consider working into your paddy wagon itinerary or convince your Greyhound driver to pull over for — in fact, the thought of a roadside attraction is probably off-putting to you unless someone can guarantee that Chevy Chase and the entire Griswald family will be there to keep things interesting. Unfortunately, this thought process is what will keep you from taking exit 216 to Brownsville, Ore., and continuing on the 3.4 miles leading to what is perhaps Oregon’s most impressive roadside attraction.

“Daddy was building this at 62, when the rest of us retire,” Nancy Bergerson says as she lifts a dying old flashlight up to one of several enormous chunks of red agate protruding from the walls of Living Rock Studios. The weak bulb of Nancy’s flashlight proves enough to illuminate the rock within the confines of the dark, cold, and rather castle-like building. Her frail arm moves the flashlight along the wall from rock to rock, allowing each one to glow individually as she unexpectedly gasps with excitement that you’ve come to tour her father’s creation.

“Daddy did it to glorify the Lord. I’m just glad I’m showing it at this age, and not building it.” What she’s showing is an 800-ton art studio made entirely of rock, cement, petrified wood and one uniquely installed hunk of railroad track. After suffering three strokes and a heart attack in 1964, Howard Taylor decided to get to work on this incredible project. By October of 1985, he had finished building the studio out of a massive amount of donated and self-accumulated rare stone and filled it with his extensive collection of over 100 bird paintings, flawless wooden carvings, early pioneer and Calapooya Indian artifacts, and a unique arrangement of paintings that offer a historical account of Oregon’s logging industry. Essentially this studio is an artistic embodiment of all things Oregon. Oh yeah…and the Lord.

Nancy is the eldest of Taylor’s three daughters, living in Goshen, Ore., but she spends the hours of 10am-5pm every Tuesday-Saturday in Brownsville, showing Living Rock Studios to all those who pass through. While the studio is ideal for any class trip or artsy afternoon outing, Nancy expresses frustration: “We really do see very, very few members of the community coming here,” she says, which is unfortunate, considering the hundreds of visitors the neighboring Linn County Historic Museum sees every month.

Describing the experience of an afternoon at Living Rock Studios proves challenging for all those who visit, but I’ll do my best: initially things feel pretty creepy. This isn’t a museum where you open the door and enter into some lobby with a front desk and a wall of pamphlets. As with any medieval castle, you ring the doorbell. After several minutes a sweet elderly woman (who you’re not entirely sure won’t take you into the back and murder you) answers the door wearing many layers. She’s very excited you’re here, and she throws a few more logs into the woodstove that sits in the front room. From here you can see a large tree trunk-like structure made entirely of petrified wood in the middle of the room that blends into the staircase leading up to the studio’s second story. Laminated Bible quotes are sprinkled throughout the displays, they coincide nicely with the occasional mentioning of the Lord. To your left is a gift shop whose sales do not appear to be booming, and beyond that sits an intriguing back yard scene.

Nancy takes you out back, and the tour begins. The yard is simultaneously cluttered with beautiful rock arrangements and general back-yard junk, not to mention two enormous, mysterious solar panels that aren’t connected to anything. But it’s gorgeous—there is a garden, a greenhouse, and a large working fountain made from petrified wood. The scene doesn’t evoke that “tourist roadside attraction” vibe whatsoever, and it truly begins to feel as though you’ve been invited into the home of a family who has devoted their life to their father’s artistic vision.

The most captivating part of the tour is the four Biblical scenes recreated using extremely thin slices of jade, agatized palm wood, onyx, obsidian, and various other colorful stones that Taylor carefully cut into translucence with his diamond saw. Each image is built into the wall with a light shining behind it, creating a stained glass effect.

Nancy proceeds to show you into a small cave inside of the front room’s massive tree trunk. This area houses Taylor’s extensive collection of crystals, cemented into its walls among the rock and petrified wood. Overhead sits approximately four feet of crooked railroad track that warrants a single question: how the fuck did he get this in here?

Finally, homegirl will lead you up the spiraling, wheelchair-accessible ramp to the building’s second story. Along the wall to your right are seventeen framed and mounted life-size birds of prey oil paintings, and embedded into the wall on your left sit rows of vintage Taster’s Choice coffee jars filled with rare gems for your viewing pleasure. Upstairs you’ll see the extent of Howard Taylor’s collection of wooden carvings—one particularly striking mermaid carving serves as the official geocache* visual of Living Rock Studios. One particularly interesting feature of the upstairs tour is the 3×2’ rotating logging book created by Daddy that offers up a bit of the Northwest’s logging history. The book requires a special turntable to operate, and each wood-framed page features neat, hand-painted text along with an oil painted illustration. In fact, Nancy explained that her daughter, who functions as Living Rock’s web designer, has digitally recreated Howard Taylor’s specific printing style: “It’s like a font…she’s made a Daddy font, so she can print in Daddy on the website.” Now that’s some post-life Daddy dedication.

Despite Living Rock Studios’ rich display of art, history, geology, and general funkiness, the road to Brownsville is one seldom traveled. However, now that you’ve been enlightened through the power of the Oregon Voice, I would encourage you to make the 30-mile trek to witness Howard Taylor’s preserved masterpiece. Once you get past the creepiness of an elderly woman religiously referring to her father as Daddy, this place is pretty fucking cool.

*Geocaching is a world-wide treasure hunting game that uses GPS-enabled devices to locate specific coordinates and find said location’s geocache. Sounds like some serious Daddy activity to me.

]]> http://oregonvoice.com/2012/01/20/living-rock-studios-oregons-hidden-gem/feed/ 0 http://oregonvoice.com/2012/01/20/tripping-in-my-fathers-footsteps/ http://oregonvoice.com/2012/01/20/tripping-in-my-fathers-footsteps/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:21:19 +0000 Noah DeWitt http://oregonvoice.com/?p=3975 Dropping LSD to carry on a family tradition.

words NOAH DEWITT
art CHELSEY BOEHNKE

I.

My dad did acid when he was my age — in San Francisco parks, with friends from his theater company, on museum meanderings and excursions in nature. He did it, he tells me, like so many others in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, because it changed the way he thought. It allowed him to perceive the world more fully and with less judgement, made the commonplace wondrous, and revealed the magic between the molecules.

Like father, like son.

I have ingested lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) four times in my 21 years. Two of those times, the stuff came dabbed on blotter paper. Another time, I took it in the form of an inoculated Smarty. But the batch of acid that spurred my wildest trip yet, with the most vivid hallucinations and the realest epiphanies, entered my bloodstream via two foil-wrapped Mini Oreos.

II.

As soon as I filled in the last Scantron bubble of my anthropology exam, I hopped on my bike and raced home, where my closest friend and messiest roommate, Tyler, and our friend Josh were waiting. We initiated Spring Break 2011 by dropping one hit of acid each. I placed the tiny square of blotter paper on my tongue, held it there for some seconds, and swallowed. After that, we had no agenda; we knew from past experiences that spontaneity makes for good tripping.

At around 4 p.m., the first effects came on: stomach butterflies, scattered attention, childlike excitement. While Josh read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn on our porch swing, Tyler and I were in our respective rooms assembling our trip kits. I grabbed Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins (selecting passages at random and reading them aloud is great trip fodder), my journal and Rapidograph pen (on LSD, anyone’s an artist), and a strand of red and yellow clay beads, which my roommate Erin had given me as an amulet of positivity.

We mounted our saddles and pedaled to the south hills, huffed and heaved up Friendly Street, and plummeted down the other side. Josh led the way to a quiet country highway. We ventured out a ways, rested against an old barn, exchanged random passages from our books, howled as we coasted through a sun-lit drizzle, rode back into city limits and ordered tea at a café.
Although we were enjoying a pleasant body high and could hardly control our laughter, the acid had been disappointingly weak. No hallucinations, no colors and no revelations.

Seated at a tiny round table next to the big front windows of the café, Tyler leaned forward. “I wouldn’t be opposed to taking more,” he said. “You guys down?”

III.

“They’re on Oreos,” said Pirate Pete, as he rummaged through his backpack in our friend’s living room. Pirate Pete, a close acquaintance, earned minimum wage at a Goodwill Donation Center. His wardrobe consisted of oversize t-shirts with wolves on them, hooded sweatshirts and faded jean cutoffs that he’d skimmed off the secondhand influx. He had a knack for getting things without paying for them, hence the nickname.

He handed a tiny foil parcel to Tyler, who unfolded it and divvied the six cookie sandwiches among us.

“I forgot about Mini Oreos,” Josh said.

“Two for you,” Tyler said as he handed me my pair.

“Two for you.” He passed a ration to Josh.

“And two for me.”

We dosed.

Most Nabisco snacks meet the same fate. They occupy a vending machine coil or 7-11 shelf until purchased, provide instant gratification to some sweet-toothed sap, and make their small contribution to obesity and type-two diabetes. They are digested into oblivion, their wrappings discarded. But thanks to a college-aged hipster with a vial of acid in Eugene, Ore., a few Mini Oreos became the vessels of a shakingly beautiful and bizarre cognitive experience.

IV.

A few months earlier in a basement in Portland, a tattoo artist had inked the words “be here now” in all-capital Helvetica letters on Josh’s chest for cheap. Josh wanted the phrase to be his permanent mantra. Be Here Now was also the title of a spiritual guidebook for American hippies written in 1971 by Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert, Ph.D.), an American psychologist turned psychedelic advocate turned Hindu spiritual teacher. Josh became known as Ram Dawg.

You’d think that having the words carved into your skin forever would get the message across, but ironically enough, Josh was having trouble being present. We were at the crest of an enormous hill, and we were high. The stars winked at us and multiplied, red and blue and white. One of the sparse cumulus clouds looked and moved like a Chinese dragon. Leaves on boughs overhead squirmed and hissed in the streetlight’s orange glow. And Josh stood holding his bike, looking at the pavement, talking on the phone to his beloved Margot, who was with friends in New York City for spring break. Leaning against the top tubes of our bicycles, Tyler and I listened in agony as Josh tried not to let on that he was tripping balls and appease his girlfriend on another coast in another time zone.

“Ok,” I said. “So if Margot’s all the way in New York, then where are we?”

“Good question,” Tyler said, looking around him for a street sign. “I think we might be right here.” He pointed to the ground, and we both cracked up.

“Yep. We’re definitely here.”

“Ram Dawg, get off the phone! Be here now! Let’s bomb this hill!” Tyler said. “Why’s his phone even on?” he asked me. He took off down the grade. I followed.

V.

Josh caught up with us at the foot of the hill, and we followed intuition where it took us. We gaped at the spiraling columns and shifting brick patterns in the façade of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on the University of Oregon campus; perched on the lowest branches of an enormous oak for almost an hour, philosophizing about matter, everlasting souls, art, language, and machines; gave Ken Kesey’s bronze statue in downtown Eugene a deep-tissue massage and thanked him for fathering the psychedelic movement; and returned home to watch abstract doodles dance around on my bedroom chalkboard.

On acid, my senses didn’t conjure, so much as they distorted. I didn’t see gnomes or freaky creatures or ancestral spirits or anything so fantastical. I saw what I would normally see — but differently. For example, a wooden chair, which would ordinarily seem plain, inanimate and useful, might have struck me as genius or comically tiny or pulsing. “Whoa” was never far from my lips.

Even when the hallucinations were over and things like wooden chairs regained their banality, my sense of awe didn’t disappear. I felt awakened. There’s more to the universe than matter in motion, I thought. Not everything can be explained.

VI.

My mom has always enforced a strict “don’t do drugs” policy, and for that reason, I will not be sending her a copy of this essay. Last March, when she phoned to catch up and asked how my spring break was, I answered with a vague “It was fun.” The guilt of withholding information from the woman who brought me into existence is terrible, but not as terrible, I hold, as the consequences of full disclosure (e.g., longwinded lectures on gateway drugs, intervention, disownment).

But when my father dropped me a line and asked me what I’d been up to, there was no hesitation. “After finals, I did acid with Tyler and Josh,” I told him. We laughed together over the phone as I recounted the trip, and he chimed in with anecdotes from his own experiments.

When I was 14, my older sister Rachael told me that Dad had dropped acid back in the day. A year later, he told me himself. He didn’t go into details about why he did it or what he gained from the experience. He didn’t express regrets.

In my junior year of high school I picked Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a 70-page essay about the mescaline experience, off my dad’s bookshelf. Tucked between the pages was an essay that my dad had typewritten in the ‘70s, analyzing Huxley’s book. My adolescent mind formed a distinction: booze, dope and pot are for shallow desires, whereas LSD, mescaline and magic mushrooms are for noble ones.

VII.

At 4 a.m., Tyler, Josh and I sat Indian-style on the dusty hardwood floor of my bedroom around one flickering votary candle. Our drawings twitched and squiggled on the dimly lit chalkboard. After rapping enthusiastically about the insignificance of our puny little lives in the eyes of the universe, we thought to ourselves in silence.
I thought of my dad, and asked: “Do you think our kids will do acid when they’re our age?”

Bonus Anecdote: The NutterButter Fiasco

As an enormous party at 16th and Patterson rages into the wee hours of an April Saturday morning, a drunk-ass UO sorority sister digs through a backpack that isn’t hers. From the rusty orange Jansport, she pulls a disposable camera and a yellow plastic Easter egg. As she walks away from where the backpack lay, she pops the plastic egg open to discover four miniature Nutter Butters wrapped in tin foil. She is hungry. She eats them.

The backpack belongs to Kaydo, a blunt-speaking, well-liked product design major who occasionally dabbles in altered states. Earlier that day, Kaydo had visited his friend Thrashur, Pirate Pete’s roommate, and purchased a plastic egg containing four LSD-charged, peanut-buttery Nabisco cookies.

One hit of potent acid will spur some freaky visuals and clear away cognitive cobwebs; four hits, and you become a cognitive cobweb.

As homegirl leaves the party at around 3 a.m., she begins to feel sort of funny. By the time she reaches her sorority, she’s hallucinating hard. As her reality disregards the laws of nature before her eyes, she starts freaking the fuck out: speaking in tongues, tucking her slippers into her bed, punching out the screens on all the windows, and kicking the house dog. When her house mom attempts to restrain her, she retaliates. Her friends take her to the hospital. Authorities use tranquilizers to put her down. At least that’s what Kaydo was able to piece together from eye witness accounts and the photos he found on his disposable camera.

“She was in the same sorority as this girl I was fucking at the time,” Kaydo says over a football game at Rennie’s Landing. In the aftermath of her trip, Kaydo called their mutual friend and asked to be reimbursed for the drugs and the camera.

“I think it really fucked up her head,” Kaydo says. Psychedelic drugs are nothing to fuck with. If it’s wrapped in tin foil and isn’t yours, don’t eat it.

photos ALLISON FONDER

LOWE’S

words LUCY OHLSEN

Lowe’s was the first stop on our crawl. After gearing up on candy canes and bumpin’ some Beethoven in the Safeway parking lot, the official OV van barreled down West 11th, leaking smoke out of the window cracks as it went. Lowe’s was not the high point of our crawl, but we should have known that by the name of the store. We tried on toolbelts, tested bath tubs, put on Christmas decorations, and were surprisingly asked if we needed any help. Lowe’s probably has everything that you need, but it lacks that spunk of a hardware store that makes hardware shopping fun.

CARSON SAW SHOP

words BEN MCPHERSON FICKLIN

Carson Saw Shop is exactly as advertised; they specialize only in saws. They sharpen blades as small as knives (for only $2.50 a knife) and as large as lawnmower blades. If it’s supposed to be sharp they will make sure it is. The building was constructed in 1911, and everything in the store reflects its old age. As the OV outfit took a look around, the head honcho, Dale, who’s daddy founded the place, explained all the memorabilia on the wall: sepia-toned photos, trays of nails and screws, clippings from newspaper, a huge mounted bass head, and hardware that looks more like it should be in a museum than an operating business. The Saw Shop’s yard is still reminiscent of its past; a dilapidated old milking barn and still-producing fruit trees share the lot. It’s easy to picture in rural Eugene, the only building for miles.

COASTAL FARM AND RANCH

words LUCY OLSEN

Coastal Farm and Ranch. They offer “just what the country needs, and then some.”  And they’re not lying. It’s a hardware store for the whole family.

Their selection of tools and wood and shit is extensive, and it rightly takes up at least half of the floorspace. To attract a more diverse crowd of builders, however, Coastal also offers an impressive selection of clothing — flannel plaids, overalls, John Deere t-shirts, battery-heated socks, and your basic Levi and Carhart apparel. If clothing and tools aren’t up your alley, you’ve got several other options left. There are aisles dedicated to livestock feed and equipment (lots of jars of dead worms and vitamin supplements for healthy goat development), equestrian gear (including stylish saddles), and there’s even a (mostly farm-themed) toy section. There’s a nice nook of gardening essentials and (occasionally garish) decorations. Almost an entire wall is occupied by buckets of various size, material and color. They also have the best tool belt selection in Eugene, starting with a pretty sturdy-looking black one at $9.99.

In a turbulent world, Coastal is a place of reassurance. Not only would it be an ideal place to be when the apocalypse happens, but while the apocalypse isn’t happening, they are committed to serving the hardworking people of the world. They comfortingly assure their customers, “We’ll be here. Today. And Every day.”

TRUE VALUE

words MARGARET APPEL

Ain’t no lie; this value’s straight truth. Voicers painstakingly crawled straight into our final stop at what is perhaps Eugene’s finest and most entertaining hardware haven. True Value features the obvious array of tools and project necessities, but ultimately it serves as the ideal spot for a stoner dad to entertain himself on a Saturday afternoon. The household necessities and cooking gadgets section is a delight to wander through pondering things you might need at some point, and hidden against the back wall you’ll find large rolls of dope-ass wrapping paper to be purchased by the foot. The customer service was present but not invasive, and T-Val also features an inspiring discount section full of crap you’d never buy otherwise. The most enjoyable aspect of the store by far was the wall of paint sample palates with shade names ranging anywhere from “Indifference” to “Warm Shawl.”

BELL HARDWARE

Not actually a hardware store. They are a supplier of commercial grade-doors. Total disappointment. After this discovery, morale was lowered.

HEINKE ELECTRICAL

words NOAH DEWITT

After scoping the cutlery at Carson Saw Shop, it would have made perfect to sense to stop at Heinke Electrical and Lighting, the hardware hookup for all things electrical located right across Blaire Boulevard. We meant to check it out, but for some reason — maybe the post-candy cane sugar crash — neglected to. On a solo visit days later, I roamed the shop and checked out their stock of heaters, lights bulbs, circuits, wires, and switches. It’s the kind of store I want to give my business to; everyone who works there has the last name Heinke, it has been around for 60 years, and it pedals equipment that will last you a lifetime. But giving the Heinkes my business wasn’t easy. From their super-specialized inventory, the only thing I could find that I actually had use for was a roll of masking tape. Support local businesses and buy your masking tape at Heinke Electrical.

words NOAH PORTER
art JOSEPH DE SOSA

Right off the bat, let me say this: I realize that being a single parent is extremely difficult, and one-parent households are a huge challenge both in America and across the world. That being said, (I am almost positive that) there are many single parents who live happy and successful lives while managing to send their intelligent, well-rounded, problem-free children to college. It is my personal belief I have the potential to be one of these people. I have a degree in a relevant field of journalism on the horizon and I’ve been told that I am very nurturing — for a dude. I cook, (know how to) clean, and possess a near-infinite well of patience. I am the only 21-year-old male I know who still babysits. I would be the single dad of the century.

Allow me to make it clear that I do not look at single-fatherhood as an ideal. I am equally romantic as I am paternal, and I would love nothing more than to find myself with a wifey-type who could bring a woman’s touch to the household and share the immense task of raising a child with me. So while I do not explicitly wish to be single father, I cannot deny that the idea presents a certain aesthetic to me.

I have romanticized my own version of single-fatherhood in which my child and I live in a two-room studio above a small independent coffee shop in the heart of one of America’s great cities. I work from home as a video editor, which allows me to spend most days with my kin. When I am required to leave the dad-pad, I have an expansive network of colleagues, rappers, and sound engineers who double as babysitters in times of need. Our home movies are shot on a Canon 7D, and they are dope as hell. I have sacrificed my social life save for a few close friends and associates (and the occasional female) — my son/daughter is my best friend, my roommate, my sous chef, and my art project.

Call me egocentric and self-servicing, but I have always envisioned my children as my creative masterpieces. Genetic pre-dispositions aside — a child is a blank canvas; as a parent you have the unique opportunity to color their person through the art of selective exposure. Each time you read them a book, play them a song, take them for a walk or put a tool in their hand, you are effectively molding the way they see, hear, and think about the world around them. This is the process of creating a persona. And as somebody who considers himself an artist, the idea of having complete creative control over this process poses a certain amount of intrigue. While it may sound like I am intent on forcing my child into a lifestyle of my choosing — I am well aware that much like horses, you can bring a child to water but you cannot make them drink. I plan on counteracting this conundrum by bringing my child to every lake, river, crick, ocean, pond, pool, and puddle that I find to contain the slightest hint of cool, scouring for the slightest spark of interest along the way. Then, covering that spark with a fodder of piano lessons, first cameras, basketball shoes, paint sets and computer software before blowing praise and support into the smoldering embers, in hopes that I might ignite a single flame of burning passion.

As I draw nearer and nearer to my assigned word count- the immensity of work  involved with simultaneously cooking for, watching after, and igniting passions within a child has begun to dawn on me. I realize now that perhaps the holy grail of child —raising lies not in complete creative control, but in collaborating on a shared vision. My revised daddy-dream now begins with the search for an ulti-mom, but still ends with the dope home movies and the rappers-turned-babysitters. Still — until I find her, I want that full custody.

words JACK WASHER
art TAYLOR JOHNSTON

Antechinus, the Self-Sacrificing Dad

These tiny little marsupial mice are the most tenacious little fuckers in the animal kingdom — literally. Once the male finds a mate he will have sex non-stop for 12 hours until he dies from a combination of over-exertion and starvation. This dad burns so much energy during the process that his little body has to produce tons of steroids to keep death at bay for as long as possible.

Stickleback Fish, the Bachelor Pad Dad

Here’s a fish that knows how to get hella domestic. A native of the PNW shores, the stickleback creates a cozy little love nest made from his own sticky kidney mucus (yum!) and lots of ornate looking rocks and twigs to lure any potential female. He then posts up outside his crib and dances (vibrates) for the ladies, flashing his bright red belly while grinding all up on them until they are thoroughly seduced.  Once the deed is done, he kicks them out and raises the hatchlings on his own. What a boss.

Rheas, the most Fucked-Over Dad

Life for these ostrich-looking birds starts off pretty great. A polygamous species, the male rhea will run around with a harem of three to 12 females, copulating all the time. Kinky, right? But all the while, these females are totally getting pregnant, and instead of each of them raising their own young, they leave all their eggs with Dad so they can run off and get knocked up again. Gold diggin’, if you ask me. The male rhea is then left to raise upwards of 60 hatchlings on his own for two whole years! But it’s OK, he totally loves them.

Emperor Penguin, the Zen Dad

For some dumb reason, emperor penguins make Antarctica their home. After the penguins mate, the male is rewarded with the prize of one large egg that he must balance on his feet in the freezing cold. During this time, all the penguin males huddle together for warmth while their female counterparts go on a two-month feeding sabbatical. Once their eggs hatch, they muster whatever food is left in their empty bellies and throw up into their young’s mouth.

Seahorses, aka Mr. Mom

If male seahorses were any better at being dads, they’d be moms. They are the epitome of role-reversal because when these little sea creatures mate, it’s the awesome dads who carry the offspring, all 1,000 or so of them. The male will proudly flaunt his massive brood pouch during the gestation period until, after 50 days, thousands of teeny tiny miniature baby Seahorses emerge.

Mufasa, Father of Simba, Mate to Sarabi, and Exalted Ruler of the Pride Lands

Undeniably the best dad in the whole universe. Mufasa is the perfect amalgamation of disciplinarian and loving father. He is the balance and harmony that is the circle of life incarnate, or should I say inanimate? After seeing The Lion King, every time I look at the stars I see the great kings of the past looking down upon us. Enough said.

Bonobos and Dolphins

Can I have some more sex with that pleasure? Bonobos like sex — a lot. It doesn’t matter what kind, and they’ll do pretty much anything to get off. Ranging from male on female, female on female, sword fighting, scrotum rubbing, and all kinds of freaky positions. They match humans on every level and then go even further by removing any societal taboo surrounding sexuality. If we had sex as frequently as Dolphins do, we’d be having sex four months out of the year. For these magical creatures, sex is the ultimate form of social bonding and indicates how this species is the smartest animal on the planet.