OREGON PAINTING SOCIETY: Grateful Druids

All Photos: May Juliette Barruel

“It was so crazy that I couldn’t tell where Oregon Painting Society ended and Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner began!” – some elated girl with black bangs

“That music sounds like RATATAT on ibuprofen.” – Tanner Dobson

The planets attempted alignment on Friday night as every swinging dick and sloppy va-jay-jay in the Portland art scene crowded into the dilapidated Templeton Building to catch the closing performance for PORTLAND2010 by Oregon Painting Society featuring Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner.  It is still incredibly up in the air as to what exactly it is that Oregon Painting Society does, but it sure as shit isn’t painting.  I visited their website to try to find some kind of mission statement or any form of contextualization whatsoever, but was too disturbed by the GIFs flashing on their splash page to venture any more deeply.  Actively, I am trying to block the image from my head – but I can’t seem to forget a gorilla sniffing a drippy candle or some shit.  Gross.  This was actually my first time seeing Woolly Mammoth Comes to Dinner, so I can admit squarely that I am not entirely familiar with their work.  However, according to the boys who run Appendix Project Space, the Woolly is a dance collective of females who do not shave their legs (read: girls who listen to Kaki King).

First of all, I’d like to offer my critique of the actual Templeton Building as a setting.  My critique is: Where is the fucking beer, bro?

Now, onto the performance.  When the lights in the space dimmed, I noticed almost instantly the smell of breaded cock filling the room.  As there was no waitress meandering through the crowd offering complimentary ramekins of ranch dressing, I could only assume that this odor was unintentional and not a part of the performance.  Somewhere between four and six white kids stood in a circle around a bucket I think and then some chick wearing a red bubble lumbered out looking like a miniature Kool-Aid man.  A moment later, I found myself incredibly offended as they chanted, “Select the witch,” in what I assume they thought to be harmony.  Somebody said some bullshit about a lasso and then they all whispered a bunch trying to sound like the creepy voices the cast of LOST always hears when alone in the jungle.  Whether or not they’ll explore the whispering phenomenon any further on tonight’s episode of LOST is anybody’s guess, but the other week it was revealed that it’s all of the people who died on the island and cannot leave, which has further spurred internet gossip that the cast members are trapped in Purgatory.  I for one have always found myself intrigued by the Biblical parallels in LOST and am looking forward to seeing where the writers take this.  Many people are assuming that the Man in Black (who is really the Smoke Monster who now occupies the body of John Locke) is Satan and that Jacob must therefore be God.  But I remain a bit skeptical; it seems too easy, right?  People have been saying for some time that Jack Shepard is a kind of Christ-figure on the television show, but in the last couple of seasons he’s become a broken man and lost his leadership sensibilities.  Nonetheless, I think that we’ll see something pretty epic from Jack soon to reaffirm his position as de facto leader/savior.

This repetitive techno music kicked in and the members of OPS and WMCtD started doing Pagan-ass dancing with their flashlights, which looked like a combination of a Star Wars light saber  battle and a couple of male kindergarten students playing swords with streams of piss.  The music, at this point, reminded me a little bit of Earthworm (my E-tard friends in the 90s listened to them a lot).  Somebody was wearing an orange construction vest, which I assumed was a jab at FUTURE_DEATH_TOLL‘s recent remarks about how they could probably beat up OPS.  Oh yeah, and there were a bunch of boxes all around the space as well and I think a couple of the performers pushed them a couple of times.  Hmm… what else…  Oh yeah, a little group of the performers were way over to the left, kind of out of the way and then they turned on a light.  So naturally, we sauntered over to see what it was that they were doing.  As soon as we got over there, they turned off the light.  Gay.

Suddenly, a tribal dance broke out and they donned Ku Klux Klan costumes and began pushing the boxes in a fever.  Some guy was waving around a piece of a banister from a staircase and apparently it was a theremin.  Every time that he moved closer to the spot where they were making the music, all of this shit changed pitch and the dancers seemed to get all wibbly in response.  At this point, a dude in front of me FARTED FUCKING HARD and nearly cleared out half of the audience.  I mean literally, people like all looked at each other and just peaced to the other side of the audience because of the rotten dead air that just fell out of this guy’s ass.  And as if this dude’s ass cavity wasn’t bumming everybody out enough, strobe lights started going off like crazy.  Well, not exactly like crazy because the kids in these groups obviously don’t have very much money.  There seriously was probably only like four strobe lights, which is just enough to give a seizure to an epileptic, but not enough to make LSD interesting.

Then one of the performers stands up and goes, “Thank you, that’s it.”  Yeah, pretty much.  The performance was an alright spectacle, but I’d have rather gone to a Pink Floyd Laser Tribute and had a couple of ice cold Bud Lights.  This is not to say that I didn’t get drunk on Friday night.  The truth of the matter is, I got fucking hammered.  And when the performance was done I bolted out the door and headed downtown to Magic Gardens to ogle some she-beef.

Oregon Painting Society, on a scale of “The Plastic Ono Band” to “The Talking Heads,” I award you a “Lighting Bolt makes you guys look like fags because they play instruments.”