People of the Crab
They tread the line between ‘tough and dumb’ balancing love, money and adventure
Cover Story
People of the Crab
Weathervane Almost 6 p.m., dark. Two of the resident boats at Woodley Island Marina have strung Christmas lights from their masts, Vs of cheer hanging upside down in the blue-black night. Other boats lie dark, or with one white spotlight ablaze to aid a last repair. Except on Dock B, where a broad yellow glow…
Locavorophobia
Take note: Our superstar Dirt columnist, Amy Stewart, has officially banned the word “locavore” and just about everything that fits under its umbrella. Her intervention comes at the precise moment locavorophilia makes its blushing debut. You can listen to Stewart’s take-no-prisoners commentary on All Things Considered on the NPR web site. And you can read…
Season’s Greetings
As you may have noticed, the Blogthing has been on temporary hiatus as we get to the home stretch of the three-day workweek holiday season. Back soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this extremely entertaining and seasonal video. They say it’s been floating around for a while, but it’s new to me. Maybe it’s new…
Charlie digs Charlie
Openings CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR Easily the most interesting of the four local openings last Friday, Charlie Wilson’s War, directed by Mike Nichols with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (West Wing), is an ironic and ultimately serious look at the U.S. covert involvement in the war between Soviet forces and the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980s.…
A History of American Cuisine, Part I
"There is no ‘American cuisine’?" inquired Nero Wolfe. "Have you eaten Maryland terrapin stewed with butter and chicken broth and Bourbon?" "No." "Have you eaten a planked porterhouse steak, two inches thick, charred on the outside, but surrendering hot > red juice under the knife, escorted by thick slices of fresh King Bolete mushrooms faintly…
A Cup o’ Kindness
Well, we’ve survived another year. To paraphrase (and reverse) Dickens, 2007 was neither the best of times nor the worst of times. So we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, and make plans to celebrate the coming of a New Year. You might want to stay home and see if Dick Clark is still alive…
What Good is Art?
It’s a cold and rainy afternoon. Christmas is upon me, and then the New Year. A time to reflect, and what I’ve been thinking about is why I write this column (roughly) every two weeks. I often feel like I’m shouting in the wind. Why do I bother writing about art and artists when people…
What happened to the Indigo?
Geoff Brandon had big plans for what, up until 2005, had been Club West. The computer consultant/stock-car racer bought the Eureka business in July of that year and in November reopened it as Indigo Nightclub and Lounge. Since then it’s been a treacherous trail of hardship and pitfalls. Now, two years and one month later,…
Little Kingdom
CD by Citay Dead Oceans/Important Records Originally spawned as a studio-only project by Ezra Feinberg and Tim Green of the Fucking Champs, Citay quickly garnered critical acclaim within independent music circles with their 2006 self-titled debut, a release well noted for its warm and vibrant tones, lush harmonies and discerning compositions. It is a formula…
Manufactured Landscapes
DVD, directed by Jennifer Baichwal Mongrel Media In some ways watching Manufactured Landscapes made me think of another famously slow documentary, Baraka. But at least in that 1992 film — a montage of stunningly rich moving images of the modern world — director Ron Fricke (cinematographer for Koyaanisqatsi) uses a combination of time-lapse photography and…
Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo
CD by Rivers Cuomo Geffen Records Rivers Cuomo, the frontman of Weezer, once famously remarked that to be a true fan of his band, you have to hate it. Weezer injected a much-needed sense of playfulness to the grunge era with Weezer ("the Blue Album")(1994) and Pinkerton (1996). In fact, the fresh-faced earnestness of those…
Out with a Bang
You couldn’t have made it any prettier without wrapping a ribbon around it. Last Friday’s hearing in the Pacific Lumber bankruptcy case beautifully bookended 2007. The year began with the 150-year-old Humboldt County institution out of gas, having suffered from 20 years of combative ownership by the Houston-based Maxxam Corp. (Charles Hurwitz, chairman, CEO and…
Gourmet
Purple mussels clutch wet rocks push Chinese Hats…
A Counting Problem
This Holiday season deserves a fun project: Count the seeds in one cattail. I estimated the number to be half a million, but every scientific claim should be verified before acceptance. I suggest you share the fun and check my result. A source of cattails is just east of Bigfoot Gas in McKinleyville. The cluster…
