Death protocols

When Staff Sgt. Will Montgomery learns of his new assignment, his stony expression cracks like poorly struck granite.

Montgomery, played by Ben Foster in "The Messenger" opening January 1 at Salem Cinema, is to become part of a casualty notification team (CNT), the men and women dispatched to notify families of active duty soldiers when they die.

That's their duty, "but the job is about something else," says Capt. Tony Stone, Montgomery's team partner played by Woody Harrelson, recently nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance in the film.

"We're all ill-equipped to deal with sudden death," said Oren Moverman, director and co-writer of the film.

Salem noir

I was talking with Emily one day about life and journalism in Salem and she made the comment that Salem has never had anyone to tell it's story well. The Salem noir story idea had been percolating since I started NVR, but it was only after I bounced it off her during that conversation that I got up the nerve to try it. One of the comments on the website said it read like a dime store novel. While the commenter meant it as a slam, it was the highest praise I could have imagined. I also want to heap praise on artist Scott Lakey who put together the cover of the issue. He had been going with a more traditional Sam Spade-esque figure, but when I sent him early drafts of the story he switched over to his interpretation on Frank Ivester as described in the opening graphs. After I got it back, I immediately called him because it's uncanny how perfect his illustration is to Ivester himself. I wish I had a picture of him to show you how close he got.

The meet goes down at a North Salem hash house that smells faintly of urinal cakes.

Frank Ivester, private eye, has shoulder-length silver hair with a matching French fork beard. His small eyes hid behind gold wire-rimmed glasses are shadowed by a tall forehead. He wears a tactical vest and black trenchcoat over a CIA T-shirt. Not used to being the one on the receiving end of an inquiry, he orders a Coke and asks:

“How did you find me?”

A single question validating the level of paranoia pervasive in classic noir fiction.

Media portrayals from the prose of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett to Rockford, Columbo and Neptune’s Mars Investigations, paint a portrait of a private dick’s work that is most often thought of as taking place in other, bigger places - Portland, L.A., New York.

Their counterparts in the legal system are police detectives and CSI teams - media darlings - but in a town where the ratio of inmates to free-birds exceeds the norm, P.I. work is plentiful. Doesn’t hurt that most major criminal cases in the state eventually end up in Oregon Supreme Court Building downtown.

Their cases don’t typically begin with a femme fatale on great pins sauntering into the office, but private investigator work in the Cherry City may be no less intriguing than a great noir mystery.

Monstrous mushrooms as the social other

For author Jeff VanderMeer, some organisms in our ecosphere are plain otherworldly.

"Squids and octopi are two and mushrooms are another. Some of the most recent research classifies mushrooms closer to animal than plant," VanderMeer said. "They're the perfect representation of the other - the thing we fear because we don't know it."

Mushrooms don't possess chlorophyll or the vascular structure to move it; neither do they dine on other plants and animals. The liminal space mushrooms inhabit made mushrooms the perfect choice for the fungaloid overseers, grey caps, in VanderMeer's latest novel, "Finch."

Vandermeer stopped at Willamette University last month to promote the book and speak to classes about his writing process.

"Finch" is Vandermeer's third foray into the fantasy/science fiction world of Ambergris. This time the story follows John Finch as he tries to unravel the mysterious death of a human and one of the grey caps. Tackled as a noir detective novel, Vandermeer takes Finch and the reader on an exploration of the seedy underworld of a seedy overworld, but Vandermeer relied on two modern cities when creating his vision.

"Paris during occupation of the Nazis during World War II and Baghdad over the past eight years were the source material," Vandermeer said.

While some might read the book as a commentary on U.S. involvement in the Middle East, Vandermeer said that wasn't necessarily his point.

"When you pull the circumstances out, it becomes much less message and, instead, it's a way of examining the world that Finch moves through. Making it fantasy gives you that leeway," Vandermeer said.

Bring in 'da fear

There were many surprises for the Fearleaders when they took the floor during the Cherry City Derby Girls Black and Blue Debut last month.

There was the packed-to-the-rafters crowd.

“That was the biggest X-factor. All the ideas we had changed because there were so many freaking people,” said Shawn “Shawn of the Dead” Cruz, Fearleader captain.

The deejay that started remixing their big dance number on the spot, much to the chagrin of Ben “Money $hot” Wiebe, who was concentrating on screaming out the step count.

“We're not the Jackson Five, we've practiced the dance twice,” Wiebe said.

But it was the spanking that topped the list.

Blurring the lines

If there is a line labeled "too far" in the Willamette Valley art community, the Emerge art show would like to pour bleach on it.

Maybe set it on fire.

"We reserve the right to refuse submissions that don't go far enough," said Jonathan Boys, Emerge founder.

Boys' attire on the evening of Emerge's opening at Coffee House Cafe was a yellow polyethylene coverall with fake blood splatters and "I killed the Willamette Valley Established Art Authority" scrawled on the back.

"Have you seen the other art outlets in the area?" asked artist Jesse Lindsay. "It's all landscapes, but there's a fringe element to every art scene and that's who Emerge is for."

The status is not quo for race relations in this country

What if Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous speech ushered in an era of color-blind racism?

In the run-up to last year's presidential election, I talked with an African-American friend about how we expected the news coverage to turn back to the race factor as the pundits ran out of hot-button policy topics to overanalyze.

I was taken aback to hear him put forth the alternative theory on the impact of the "I Have a Dream" speech. The crux of the contention is a simple matter of word order. King dreamed of his four children living in a nation where they were not judged by the color of their skin. That was all most of the audience heard.

It became unfashionable, after that speech, to proclaim racist feelings, but people still harbored them. Individuals would tell friends, neighbors - and pollsters - that they had no problem with people of color, but their palms started sweating as soon as they got in an elevator with two black men. The essence of color-blind racism is saying one thing and doing another.

The need for President Barack Obama's beer summit, the faux pas of “wise Latina” and even the hostilities at recent town hall meetings are likely manifestations of color-blind racism. However, calling someone a racist (yes, Mr. Carter, I’m looking at you) doesn’t move us any closer to solving the problem.

Haunted eats

I found out after we went to press that the woman who was playing cards at Thompson's was one of our ad sales people.

Julie Darrow went flush with fear the first time she encountered Franklin.

Darrow was busing tables in an upstairs room at the Thompson Brewery and Public House when she heard a pitter-pat on the table.

"The weird thing was I was cleaning up after a family whose child had asked me if the place was haunted," Darrow said.

The tapping was followed up with a loud bang that sent chills up her spine and drained the color from her face.

"I ran downstairs and paid someone else to finish busing the table," Darrow said.

Franklin is the entity that both employees and patrons believe is haunting Thompson Brewery. Franklin Thompson was a Civil War veteran and farmer who, along with his wife, were the first inhabitants of the home at 3575 Liberty Road S., in Salem. Franklin, staff believe, has taken to playing tricks on visitors since his death in 1923.

"I had one customer who was sitting upstairs all alone playing cards who swears she saw a child playing peekaboo with her," Darrow said. "Another woman brings her grandson in here every time he visits. He's completely convinced this place is haunted."

Franklin might be one of the busiest ghosts in the area, but he's far from the only ethereal inhabitant of local eateries.