Burgerville.

On the next Outlook Portland (Sunday, 6:30am, on NW32 TV)…

Since 1961, Burgerville has been a part of Northwest life, starting at a single address in Vancouver and growing to more than 35 locations throughout Washington and Oregon. This year, the restaurant celebrates its 50th anniversary, and what was true fifty years ago is true today: ask anyone in this part of the world–they’ll have a favorite item on the Burgerville menu.

On this Sunday’s Outlook Portland, we’ll be joined by Burgerville USA‘s President and CEO, Mr. Jeff Harvey; he’ll talk about the restaurant’s founding, evolution, and freakishly-delicious onion rings. We’ll also speak with Daniel Cogan, General Manager of Burgerville’s Montavilla location…and, as a side note, I’ll solemnly vow to never again tape Outlook Portland on an empty stomach.

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Vince from the zombie-themed graphic novel Walking Dead.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

Seth Aaron Henderson.

Tune in tomorrow for a brand new show with fashion designer and Project Runway winner, Seth Aaron Henderson.

Sunday. 6:30am. Only on NW32 TV. Home of Hellcats! Rawr!

Oregon Film and TV Dollars.

Dean Martin, when asked about his film career, famously said, “Acting? That’s not hard work. Anyone who says acting’s hard work never had to deal blackjack for three hours.”
But, of course, even that carefully-dismissive answer was, itself, part of an act–a construct, for, as Dean Martin knew, acting is a craft, a magic, a talent, an art…and a sometimes-difficult job. And balancing all of those elements can be the hardest act of all.

On the next Outlook Portland (6:30am, on NW32 TV), we’ll talk to Mr. Harold Phillips, a man who handles both the creative and commercial sides of the equation with aplomb.

He’s been seen in myriad TV and film productions, including Leverage, The Outbreak, Company of Thieves, and Dark Horizon. He also works -seemingly without pause- to raise and maintain awareness of Portland’s potential as a hub for artistic dollars.

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Paul Stanley of KISS…as a rubber duck.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

Kelly Clark and John Gorham.

Sunday’s Outlook Portland (6:30am, on NW32 TV) is going to make you almost unbearably hungry, and you’re going to end up rooting around inside a half-empty bag of graham crackers and cursing.

Just so you know.

We’ll speak with Portland chef John Gorham, whose news restaurant, Tasty n Sons, has been named the best in Portland by Willamette Week. We’ll also speak with Willamette Week‘s Arts and Culture Editor (and one of our favorite people) Ms. Kelly Clarke.

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Magic: the Gathering’s Thornscape Battlemage.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

Morgan Grace.

The writer and rhetorician William F. Buckley, Jr. once said, “Life can’t be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas there are…and listen to them for ten years.”

At the other end of the ideological spectrum is Frank Zappa’s observation that “without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of deadlines by which bills must be paid.”

That these two men -who probably disagreed on the color of the sky- should agree on the nature of music is further evidence that music is what unites…well…everything.

To have such art is to be lucky…to know some of its finest creators is to be doubly so. On this Sunday’s Outlook Portland (6:30am, on NW32 TV), we’ll be joined by one of Portland’s finer examples: singer/songwriter/performer Miss Morgan Grace.

photo by David Ackerman

We’ll talk about her latest video, “Vampire Love”, in which she stunningly recreates myriad scenes from Twilight; we’ll also discuss live performance versus studio creation, and we’ll learn the genesis of the magical song “Valentine”.

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Paul Stanley of KISS…as a rubber duck.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

Next week: We follow up with Lisa and Brian Wood -owners of Big-Ass Sandwiches– one year after they launched their food cart. It really is quite a story.

PHAME Academy on the next Outlook Portland.

The performing arts -in addition to being entertaining, educational, and, at times, therapeutic- are remarkable for still another reason: the universal nature of their power. Communication in the form of music, for example, is a sort of emotional skeleton key — reaching past boundaries and borders, whether physical, cultural, or circumstantial. Music is truly the open-source language.

Nowhere is that more evident than at Portland’s PHAME Academy, which gives mid-teens and adults with developmental disabilities and special needs in Portland and Vancouver the chance to participate in the fine and performing arts.

Joining us on Sunday’s Outlook Portland (6:30am, on NW32 TV). are PHAME Academy Artistic Director Jessica Dart, Music Director Ben Landsverk, and Managing Director Stephen Marc Beaudoin. They’ll discuss the history of this amazing organization, and talk about what productions are on the horizon.

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: The Last Son of Krypton: Superman.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson .

Byron Beck this Sunday.

As the old cliche goes: if you don’t like the weather, just give it a few minutes, and something different will come along. The same could be said for almost any of the innumerable current events presently occupying the good people of Portland. From revolutions on the local culinary scene to whole constellations of Hollywood stars appearing out of nowhere….there is, truly, never a dull moment.

On Sunday’s Outlook Portland (Sunday at 6:30am, on NW32 TV), we’ll be joined by a man who helps bring all of these disparate elements together: Portland writer, journalist, and stylish man about town….Byron Beck of ByronBeck.com.

That’s the next Outlook Portland (Sunday at 6:30am, on NW32 TV).

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Magic the Gathering‘s Thornscape Battlemage.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

This Sunday.

It’s a work so powerful that its author placed it in a vault, issuing orders that it not be performed until 25 years after his death.

Its words that form part of a vast, sprawling web of despair, loneliness, alcoholic misery….and, despite that (or because of it), a certain kind of painful, grey-scale beauty:

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done, they make you do other things…until at last…everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too.”

The work is Eugene O’ Neill’s masterful play Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which runs through September 5th, 2010 at Portland’s Newmark Theater, and features in its cast the towering William Hurt, as well as Portland’s own Todd Van Voris.

On the next episode of Outlook Portland (Sunday at 6:30am, on NW32 TV), we’ll be joined by Mr. Allen Nause, Artistic Director of the Artists Repertory Theater in Portland, who are co-producing the play’s run (along with the Sydney Theatre Company). We’ll discuss the fascinating history of the play itself, as well as its intriguing intersections with William Hurt’s life and career.

That’s the next Outlook Portland (Sunday at 6:30am, on NW32 TV).

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Godzilla, King of the Monsters.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

Outlook Portland: The Return of John Rogers

As is the case with almost every subject, the sharpest, spikiest words about the job of writing came from Dorothy Parker, who said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Fortunately for all of us, a great number of burgeoning wordsmiths escape their friends’ gunfire-based ministrations, and are, thereafter, free to unleash all manner of creative conglomerations upon the world.

Such a man is John Rogers; he is the creator, showrunner, writer, and mastermind for the TV series Leverage — filmed in our fair city. He has written or co-written screenplays for such films as Transformers and The Core, he contributed to the fourth-edition of Dungeons and Dragons: Manual of the Planes, has written for numerous comic books, and -just to run up the scoreboard- holds a degree in physics.

He’ll be my guest on this Sunday’s Outlook Portland, opining on such matters as:

The rise of Geek Culture — what was the tipping point that led to mainstream nerd-dom?

His writing process and routine, as well as the differences between solo writing and collaboration.

Portland as a filming location, and our city’s particular draw for artists.

Wil Wheaton’s status as a barometer of one’s relative place in the Geek Hierarchy.

John Rogers: on the next Outlook Portland (Sunday at 6:30am, on NW32 TV).

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: Vince, from the comic series Walking Dead.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.

NEXT WEEK: Allen Nause, Producing Artistic Director for Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. We’ll discuss their current production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Project Pooch.

“A boy and his dog.”

It’s a phrase which looms large in not only the American lexicon, but in the human lexicon. Though we are surrounded by domesticated animals of all varieties, there is no denying the distinct, unmatched bond between man and canine. In the 14,000 years since they began their developmental split with wolves, dogs have come to occupy a sort of evolutionary middle-ground…one shared by no other animal.

They are animals, yet they live in our homes, and frequently sleep on our beds. They naturally exist in packs, but that pack is often headed by…one of us. In situations of conflict, they will commonly fight on the side of humans, even when the aggressor is “one of their own kind.”

More than any other living creature, they have thrown in their lot with us, and we with them. And now, that bond is being used in a kind of joint rehabilitation, with both the boy and his dog emerging better on the other side. This unlikely endeavor is called Project Pooch.

What is Project Pooch? It’s a concept so beautiful and obvious in its simplicity that it reduces the toughest of men to tears. Project Pooch matches abandoned, unwanted shelter dogs with inmates in the prison system — typically young inmates, who were, themselves, abandoned or unloved.

On this Sunday’s Outlook Portland, we’ll talk to Joan Dalton and Dave Waki, Executive Director and Board Member, respectively, of Project Pooch.

That’s on the next Outlook Portland (Sunday at 6:30am, on NW32 TV).

The show will also feature another “Outlook Portland Editorial Reply”, brought to you by our marquee sponsor, Things From Another World. This week’s guest editorialist: The Last Son of Krypton…Superman.

Outlook Portland, Sunday at 6:30am, only on NW32 TV…the home of Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and Rick Emerson.