Portland City Council is approving the MLS deal today without $15 million in urban renewal funding, but not without some first-class fireworks between commissioner Randy Leonard and county chair Ted Wheeler. Dan Saltzman introduced the amendment removing the $15 million, then voted yes on the amended measure, along with Randy Leonard and Sam Adams. Amanda Fritz and Nick Fish voted no.

If the $15 million hole is not patched by September, the deal is off.

I eat lunch most every day at an Indian grocery near my office. Since they’ve got B4U Music on the big screen, I can’t help but associate Bollywood and cholle.

And let me tell you, nothing tastes better than some good Indian food after a vigorous game of pick-up hockey. (What… you think that’s weird?)

I love the Latin-rock influence in this one. And Sneha Ullal is kinda cute, too. Okay, pulled Lucky Lips; was told it was eh, maybe not appropriate. How about some Tenu Leke from Salaam-E-Ishq (2007), a movie I had the pleasure of viewing while hopped up Percocet after a wisdom tooth extraction:

Per Terry’s request, more harmony (Lion Song by Jay Harden):

As for “more bass”, maybe it’s your computer speakers. The recording engineer thought we mixed the bass too high!

From the Left Coast Sports Babe, with a tip of the hat to Greg Drinnan’s Kamloops, B.C. based Taking Notes:

Barack Obama took his first foreign trip to Canada this past week. He said in a speech there that he expected to fix the U.S. economy, bring the troops home from Iraq, and solve global warming. Realistically, however, he said there was nothing he could do about the Maple Leafs.

Just before I moved to Oregon from the broad American prairie, I was playing bass in a band called Totem Soul. We earned enough money playing in college bars to pay for three days in a professional recording studio (this was before the age of serious DIY recording, so it was a big deal), and recorded an LP’s worth of material.

Here’s Lear’s Shadow, by one of our three singer song-writers, Jay Harden:
[audio:Totem_Soul-Lears_Shadow-Shaking_Roots_at_the_Moon-track04.mp3]

Then we took the rest of our money, loaded all our gear into the back of my 1963 Chevy Stepvan (a.k.a. “the pig”), and headed west. The Chevy made it, but the band didn’t last. We worked a little in Eugene and Portland, then broke up a few months later, frustrated by the lack of venues for our peculiar sound and the intricacies of running a four-piece band with three frontmen. Our LP was never pressed, and the recordings sat in the can for nearly two decades before POD Web publishing made it generally available.

So, why the sappy nostalgia? Because I just figured out how to embed audio on my blog.

And after two decades in Oregon, it seems like an interesting time to look back. Portland looked a lot different in 1989. I was “creative class” when that meant a struggling musician could rent a room for $150 bucks in a big shared house in inner Southeast, bike commuting meant riding a one-speed to part-time, low-wage employment at a natural food store, and livability meant you could sleep in your van down by the Sunflower recycling yard when you were between houses.

The Pearl was a derelict rail yard (the title sequence of Drugstore Cowboy, released that year, was filmed there), MAX ran only from Gresham to downtown, and there was a temporary ice rink on Pioneer Court House Square between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Old town was awash in cheap heroin and prostitutes, and timber was still the dominant industry in Oregon. TriMet was still running buses built in the 70s, and the night club scene was dominated by white blues.

Northwest 23rd Ave. was already long gone by then, but Hawthorne was still lined with junk shops and dive bars, and the Bagdad Theater was a second-run house, with a porn screen in back. Who remembers the Ol’ Milwauke or the Tu-Be?

Okay, enough of that shit. Fast forward twenty years. It’s been quite a ride.

Sir! No Sir!, the suppressed story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam, is being screened this Saturday as a benefit for the Portland Central American Solidarity Committee’s anti-war delegation to Venezuela.

Details:

• Saturday February 28
• Doors open at 5:30pm
• Event begins at 6pm
• Limited seating – Tickets: sliding scale $5 to $10
• Musicians Union Hall, 325 NE 20th Ave., Portland, Ore.
• For tickets call: Dan Shea 503.661.1317, or e-mail djshea@hotmail.com

Fundraiser for PCASC’s anti-war delegation is an effort to cultivate ties of international solidarity between activists for peace and social justice in the US and Venezuela.

Proceeds from this event will go to help send IVAW (Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans Against the War) along with a PCASC delegation as observers to witness and to report back on the recent elections, supports and oppositions to the Government of Venezuela. An event is being arranged in Caracas to have a Winter Soldier hearing (eyewitness reports by IVAW) on US policies that have endangered the lives of our military men and women and innocent Iraqi civilians leading to war crimes and reasons why members of IVAW are refusing to redeploy, or to further participate in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. IVAW is organizing active military soldiers to join them in building a GI resistance movement and to advocate for returning veterans rights, jobs, benefits and healing by working for peace and reintegration into our communities.

• www.ivaw-oregon.org
• www.ivaw.org

If you cannot attend or if the screening is sold-out but you want to help support this effort and would like to make a tax-deductible contribution you can write a check to Education WithOut Borders, earmark PCASC/IVAW 2009; mail to: EWOB, 19716 NE Flanders, Portland , OR 97230.

What else can you say when your new mayor is sidelined on the top two items on his 100 days plan: first education, and now economic development?

Even while many local politicos cower quietly in fear of retribution from a wounded and cornered Sam Adams (and his sycophants repeat the canard about prudes), the big dogs are openly snubbing him, citing the desire to avoid “distractions”.

Next on Adams’ 100 day plan (scrubbed from his Web site, but still in the Google cache as of this evening, which includes this creepy campaign video, where Adams talks about needing to keep his clothes on) is transportation. While not entirely sidelined on that, he’s certainly crippled.

Randy Leonard is playing hardball on the I-5 bridge Michael Powell is whining that his pet project to get another streetcar line stopping at his business’s front door is “up in the air.”

The remaining items on the erstwhile 100 day plan are planning and sustainability, arts and culture and emergency management.

Sam still seems to have a great deal of unqualified support in the arts community, but otherwise, his credibility as a leader is looking increasingly like toast.

One education leader put it to me this way (paraphrasing): He wouldn’t be allowed to coach a little league team or lead a Boy Scout troop. Why should we let him be mayor?

News that the state of Oregon is considering reinstating the teaching license of an admitted serial child sex abuser is weird enough. But it gets weirder.

Roberta Weber, cited in the O as someone “who directed hard-of-hearing education and other special education programs in Portland for years”, defended the former teacher, Kimberly Horenstein: “Kim has a unique talent for working with this special population … and maintains clear and appropriate boundaries with staff and children. … I am fully aware of Kim’s … issues in her past, and can support, without reservation, that Kim should return to the field of education.”

But wait, here comes the really fun part.

Weber’s current job with Portland Public Schools: director of strategic partnerships” charged with building external relationships with “strategic community partners.”

Could that include our illustrious mayor Sam Adams and his well-regarded plan to increase high school graduation rates?

I just love how warm and tolerant Portland is… (unless you’re a child or other vulnerable member of society).

I’ve promised a post on Portland’s collective extended adolescence, but somebody beat me to it (don’t worry, I’ve still got a thing or to to add to the conversation). Adrienne calls it Peter Pan Syndrome (PPS). Here’s a mature 25-year-old’s take on some of the 40-something behavior she observes in Portland.

In transition

Sustainable, of course