Poets Unite!

The scene was as hip as you can imagine, tea-sipping teenagers and their chai-chugging elders stacked wall to wall inside of the Bend’s Townshends Teahouse. Awaiting local hip-hop icon and slam host Jason Graham a.k.a. Mosley Wotta to begin the fourth Third Thursday Poetry Slam held for all ages. Although Silver Moon Brewing Co. has been doing the +21 and up poetry slam for many years, Graham thought it was time to expand.

“A lot of kids are great writers and artists, they should have an opportunity to voice it,” says Graham after one of the slams.

Over a dozen participants entered the three round competition. The poets’ ages ranged from early teens who made the audience laugh with clever rymes about school, to old men who made everyone in the building cry with poetry about their animals who passed away.

Into the second round about half of the crowd had dissipated and only eight competitors remained. The poetry slam continued with many good and bad performances until the final four remained. Of these four, Terran Randolph shined with a bittersweet reflective poem about American society that completely captivated the audience and sent him into first place. All the competitors were more than cordial with eachother and really seemed stoked just to be able to read their art for the public.

Townshends Third Thursday Poetry Slam is not just another venue for Bend’s youth to spare their time once a month, it is an opportunity for everyone of all ages to express themselves in a unique and powerful way. The all ages poetry slam has sparked a cry from Bend’s youth for more of these opportunities and organizations are answering.

CADA|CASA is offering Social Commentary Through Hip-Hop and Slam Poetry through the Poet House. The organization hopes that public schools will catch on and eventually slam poetry will be an accessible art for every public school student.

For now, we will just have to settle for packing into the Teahouse for some chai and good poetry every third Thursday of the month. I suppose no one’s complaining…

Capture The Flag

Roughly thirty minutes after extras and friends started arriving, the band of fun-loving rockers known as Capture The Flag rolled up casually late in a cargo of cars filled with pizza and friends. Guitar/vocalists John Davis and Zach Nance both proudly sporting vintage 80’s Ratt tees and the whole band noticeably pumped for their very first music video shoot.

It’s been four months since the conception of the local pop/punk band Capture The Flag; they have already been in AMP magazine as a featured unsigned band and very recently shot their first music video.

“We think it’s great that we’ve only been playing together for a few months and we already have so many things going for us,” said guitarist John Davis during a break from filming their new video, “Take This Bottle Of Wine & Your Infidelities To Fifth Street”. The song hits close to home, as it

“If you want to know the reason why we do it, it’s about to walk into the room,” added bassist Tyler Dominy as a couple of very attractive women walk into the already crowded loft filled with the band and all the video’s extras.

In the days and weeks leading up to Capture The Flag ‘s music video shoot, the band called everyone they knew in hopes to fill the Rise Up warehouse full of young extras to create a real life house party for their video.

“We’ve been planning on doing this video for a few months now. We’ve run into a few snags; we changed the song we are doing and that was kind of stressful. Gus, our new drummer, just started playing with us a few days ago so we had to work with that too, but we got it all together and we’re really excited” said lead guitarist and vocalist Zach Nance.

Take after take, the band became more and more comfortable with the challenges of pretending to play their music in front of an overbearing lighting set up while cameras continuously invaded their personal space. The extras, which were almost completely compiled of close friends of the band, were great at being just as stoked about the song on their last take as the first. Which was definitely a task seeing as they did fifteen takes before beginning profile shots without the party crowd.

“We’re just hoping that doing this video is going to give us a lot more exposure, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it,” said Davis, “...our next goal is to put together a five-track EP which we think is going to be really good.”

The band has about ten or eleven tracks they’ve been working on for quite a while.

“John and I have been writing together since high school and we have enough songs that now that we want to start recording our best so we can really get them to sound just how we want in the studio,” adds Nance.

Capture The Flag has quickly progressed from a few friends trying to make some good music and get noticed, to a solid pop punk band with the opportunity to make it big. Due to their uncanny ability to get along with each other combined with their undeniable talent as musicians, John, Zach, Tyler, and Gus have a great band and a niche they believe they can be successful with.

“We think it would be the coolest thing to be the hometown heroes. I hope we get there, and we have a long way to go, but it’s an cool process and we’re having a lot of fun,” ends John Davis.

ASCOCC Meeting Entices Inquiries

On January 29, the seven members of COCC’s student government sat down for their weekly meeting to discuss campus issues and happenings. With four journalists and a concerned member of the staff body attending this meeting, it was kept very professional throughout the hour and a half meeting. To kick things off, Mrs. Erin Foote Marlowe spoke as a concerned member of COCC and had a list of fallacies and solutions for them that she presented to the ASCOCC staff. The members were very patient and respectful, allowing Mrs. Marlowe the floor before arguing each point seemingly for the sake of arguing. The most time was spent on unfair funding for The Broadside, COCC’s student run paper.

“There is no mechanism for disagreements within ASCOCC,” said Marlowe.

“We have to represent the people that are personally attacking us even if they don’t want us to,” responds GREYBEARD.

After almost an hour of discussion and debate, the committee dove into their other topics of discussion. This included an info fair wrap-up, plans for many student activities. The exciting plans included a student Country Night and a possible Battle of the Bands concert to raise money for “Pennies For Peace”.

There was also an approval to spend $2,625 on 750 custom made ASCOCC t-shirts and commercial requests that included solar water heaters, green energy fuel for COCC vehicles, and more recycle bins. Members also briefly discussed doubling the bandwidth for the entire COCC campus.

Next on the agenda, the ASCOCC board had to decide whether or not to spend over $2,000 to fund a trip for the Anime Club to travel to Seattle for a Japanese culture convention. Seeing as one of the ASCOCC members is also a member of the Anime Club, the proposal passed with only one member voting no.

After all this, the weary members of ASCOCC finished their meeting discussing the approval to pay video contractor Rob Walker $3,000 for the spring term for his work on ASCOCC’s website and other jobs and duties on campus.

All in all, the seven people sitting across from each other did their job in that hour and a half, as drudging as it might have been. Money was spent; decisions were made, and there was much left to ponder over a time to come.

Don Iler: Stone-faced Killer with a Soft Side For Scotch

Sitting down with the infamous Don Iler can sometimes be tense and even painful, but not today. No, today Don Iler was on top of the world for he had just spent the afternoon at The Broadside South, the Editor-In-Chiefs’ unofficial second office located quaintly inside of The Abbey Pub.

Diving right into serious topics of discussion, Don Iler immediately began speaking about what truly grinds his gears.

“I’m really just feeling over the whole college thing, writing worthless papers about gender roles in today’s society. I don’t give a shit about gender roles honestly,” Iler admits.

In attempt to veer Don Iler away from hulking out over whether he or his future wife should bring home the bacon every day, the topic was quickly adverted to dragon slaying. When asked whether or not he would be willing to slay a dragon if the opportunity arose, Don Iler responded quickly with assurance in his voice.

“ Yes. Absolutely, because there would be proof that there really are dragons in our existence. I would slay it and bring it to the Smithsonian where it could be preserved forever,” Iler presents.

Don Iler is seemingly ruthless when it comes to dragon humanity.

“ Even if it was pink! In fact, if it were a pink dragon I would definitely slay it. Plus, then I could make pink dragon scale boots and sell them to dragon enthusiasts,” Iler explains.

Don Iler then, in the flash of an eye, drifted off into a far away land where you could only barely see it in the glint of his glossy eyes. He began talking about flying, first on a dragon and through his twisted train of thought then on an Osprey, which is a military tiltrotor aircraft. He began telling story after story about his experiences and memories of his journeys through a war many of us have never seen the true face of. All this he did without being asked a single question. Unlike most young vets, Don Iler is proud of what he did and no one could’ve explained a soldier’s point of view better than he did.

“ It was like a very long, extended, and fucked up camping trip,” he again drifts off into some far away place where his eyes seem to do nothing but replay whatever he saw over and over again, “I remember best the days with laughter. The days when we’d go out back behind the mess hall and steal a bunch of pallets for a fire. And we’d go out and find some old Israeli guy with a cheap, disgusting bottle of whiskey and pay him way to much money for it. We’d go take our pallets and our over priced, foul tasting scotch and go build a bonfire and just relax, try to forget all the fucked up shit around us. It sounds dumb, like a bunch of dude-bros hanging out in the desert getting shit-faced, but there was just something special and sacred about that camaraderie and fun dispersed in between so much violence,” he finishes, only glancing over solemnly at his conclusion.

There is pain and wisdom in Don Iler’s eyes. He has witnessed life and death first hand and along the way learned that the most precious things in life may just be those simple joys that keep us all sane.

bio, yo.

Zachary Hunt was born into a very caring family that loved him so much, their hearts actually exploded with joy when he was born. His parents lived in little Ocean Beach, California and happened to be rescuing sea turtles on the beach when Zachary's mother went into labor. So as it happens, nature had it's way and little Zachary was taken out to sea.

While floating with the baby sea turtles for the first three weeks of his life, infant Zachary was already a majestic swimmer and very keen to how the savage nature of life has no mercy, especially for little babies.

After his time with the seas turtles, savage baby Zachary found a pod of beautiful Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins who took him in as one of their own, promising to get him all the way to Alaska, where he would be taken better care of by the Gray Wolves. In his journey with the dolphins, he learned not only the ways of the water but he bacame Baby King of the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins and was given a crown made of pure gold found by the pod in their travels through Atlantis. This crown gave small and wise baby Zacahary the power to know every answer to every question in the entire universe.

With this new found knowledge and power, little baby Zachary took all of his goodness away from the ocean to be with the Gray Wolves, where he could once again be one with earth, wind, and fire. Standing on the shore of Valdez, Alaska, little and wise baby Zachary said goodbye to the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins in their native tounge, they did backflips and yelled day and night night in delight and thanks for being blessed to have young Zachary in their lives.

By sundown, the Gray Wolves met baby Zachary with warm smiles and clothing with promises of a feast when they arrived at the colony. As baby Zachary rose over the hilly crest leaving the beach he saw thousands and thousands of Gray Wolves playing and yelping and screaming for joy in the glory of the Alaskan Wilderness. For years, Zachary lived with the Gray Wolves, learning their mysterious ways of life. By the time he was 18, Zachary had conquered Valdez and all the surrounding area. This was not by force, but through passion and love.

Because Zachary had experienced and learned so much through mother nature, he decided to take his plethura of knowledge and beauty to SOCIETY. There he found that with the facts of life he'd gathered in his journey, he could change the world with his great knowledge and outstanding compassion. Now he is a journalism student in hopes to CHANGE THE WORLD, or at least scrounge up enough money to see the family back in Valdez.