Robert Downes

Features Robert Downes Few actresses have as many accomplishments as Iris Bahr, who’s managed to serve as a sergeant in the Israeli army, study neuropsychology at Brown University, and write a memoir of her travels in Asia entitled “Dork Whore.”
That’s in addition to appearing on television programs including Friends, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The King of Queens and starring in the 2006 film comedy, Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector.
But her biggest role is literally the one she’s starring in at present: playing the roles of 11 people who are the victims of a suicide bombing in a Tel Aviv café.
Bahr’s one-woman show, Dai (“Enough”) will be performed this Friday, June 29 at 8 p.m. at the Traverse City Opera House.

Books Robert Downes Walk into any tourist t-shirt shop on the planet and you’re likely to find the brooding image of Che Guevera in his star-topped black beret, ready to enlist the wanna-be revolutionaries of the world into what is now little more than a fashion statement.
But in his day, Che Guevera was a young man who shook the world as one of a handful of guerillas who waged a successful revolution in Cuba with Fidel Castro. He was a 34-year-old idealist who dreamed of exporting the same revolutionary tactics to South America when he was gunned down by the Bolivian army working with the Central Intelligence Agency in 1967.
But who was Che? The fun-loving young doctor of “The Motorcycle Diaries,” or the communist icon who talked a good game of freedom, but was just as willing to crush Cuba’s free press after the revolution?
Author Chuck Pfarrer offers some answers in his first novel, “Killing Che,” which is based on the revolutionary’s own field diaries. That, and Pfarrer’s own background as a former Navy SEAL, which provides some behind-the-scenes insight into how the CIA’s covert campaign against Che may have gone down.

Dining Robert Downes When you stop by the party, be sure to kiss the moose.... and raise a toast to the 125th birthday of one of Northern Michigan’s best-loved destinations this Saturday, June 23 at Sleder’s Family Tavern in Traverse City.
Owners Deb and Brian Cairns are hoping for a turnout of 1,200 for their outdoor celebration, which will be packed with games, music, food and beverages from noon until 10 p.m. at the popular restaurant/bar on Randolph Street, just off Division.
For decades, Sleder’s has been a “must-do” destination in Northern Michigan. The place oozes history and tradition with wood-paneled walls packed with the taxidermy heads of wild animals. Not to mention its famous moose, whose leathery lips have kissed many a bonny lass and laddie, accompanied by ringing a bell. It’s no wonder Sleder’s is a perennial favorite of travel writers from all over the world.

Features Robert Downes Tired of golf? Weary of fishing? Bored of biking? Maybe it’s time you did a little trap shooting to put a charge back in your summer.
Trap shooting is a blast, literally. Locally, shotguns start at around $400, but for $1,000, you can purchase a .12 gauge shotgun that’s been specially-configured for knocking clay pigeons out of the sky. The alternative is using your dad’s old hand-me-down to see if you like the sport.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes When I saw my first real-life hippies for the first time 40 years ago, I thought they were the strangest critters in zoo.
One of my favorite things to do as a teenager in 1967 was hanging out at the Detroit Zoo. At that time, the zoo was free of charge and I used to spend summer afternoons there, walking the trails and observing the people and the animals.
People, frankly, weren’t all that colorful in a day when bluejeans were still known as “dungarees” and worn by farm kids. Style-wise, most Americans in the white middle class looked pretty much the same. For young men, there was the greaser look, the California beach boy thing, jocks with their varsity jackets, maybe a Beatle haircut here and there, or the fresh-off-the-farm look I was saddled with: white socks, penny loafers, dungarees and a short “Princeton” haircut that was the epitome of nerdiness.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Dagwood Bumstead still carpools to work, but outside of the funny papers, you don’t hear much about sharing rides these days.
But maybe Dagwood will have more company now that gasoline is somewhere around the $3.60 per gallon mark.
Since many of our readers weren’t even born when carpooling was invented, let’s take a drive down Memory Lane. In 1973-’74, the Arab countries launched an oil embargo against the U.S. to punish us for supporting Israel. The result was long lines at the pumps, with little gas to go around.

Dining Robert Downes When a golden opportunity for a new coffeehouse surfaced on the west side of Traverse City, Jill and Tom Gibler were quick to act.
“We live just down the road, and when I saw workers breaking ground for a new plaza, I told my husband that this would be a great place for a coffee shop,” Jill remembers. “There’s a lot of suburban development going on here with plenty of traffic. And he got very quiet for awhile, and then the next day he was contacting the developers. It all fell into place for us.”
Now, the Coffee Bean Cafè is a reality, located next to the new Francisco’s
Market and Deli on Silver Lake road, just west of town.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes was sorry to learn that the Catholic Church got rid of Limbo this spring, because I was planning to stop by there someday on my way to someplace better.
For you nonbelievers, Limbo was a place the Vatican invented hundreds of years ago as a sort of Lost in Space rest stop for folks too innocent to send to Hell, but not quite ready for Heaven.
Unbaptized babies went to Limbo. So did Eskimos, Hottentots and other nice pagan folks from out-of-the-way places who were denied the chance to hear about Jesus Christ by sheer geological barriers. Jews born before Jesus got in too.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes There‘s a lot of pain in Northern Michigan these days as local agencies feel the lash of cutbacks in state funding.
The arts, foster care, libraries, mental health... People are hurting in our state due to Michigan‘s “structural deficit.” Meaning, the 25% of manufacturing jobs we’ve lost over the past seven years have taken their tax dollars with them, and chances are those jobs won’t be back anytime soon. We’ve lost some 330,000 manufacturing jobs here since 2000, according to the University of Michigan.
Even if those jobs come back, chances are it will be with the proviso of huge tax breaks, or less fruitful jobs in America’s new “service economy,” such as it is.
We hear brave voices, speaking on behalf of orphaned children, the mentally ill, the elderly and the poor. We understand the need for art, education, a pure environment, good roads, strong hospitals and all of the benefits of life here in Michigan.

Music Robert Downes What’s the latest on local music? The following is a round-up of CDs by musicians from around Northern Michigan. Reviews by Robert Downes.

All Odds Against • All Odds Against
Who would have suspected that Gaylord would have produced such a dead-on homage to the current state of hardcore? All Odds Against got their start in the winter of 2003 and have since been through numerous changes in their lineup while keeping true to their vision of extreme metal.
The band includes Derek on bass, Greg on guitar, Olen on guitar and Steve on drums (alas, no last names included in the liner notes), with an assist on vocals by Frances Damoth. Most of the band members perform on vocals, dishing up croaking screams and howls in the best tradition of today’s hardcore yellers, with an effect like sandy jalapeno peppers inching through a colitic bowel. All Odds Against have clear command of their instruments on this six-song EP. We liked the operatic “Sands Through the Hourglass” for throwing down the hammer and upholding Gaylord’s place in the pantheon of aggressive metal.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Heard that a couple of teens got kicked out of a local high school the other day for getting caught with alcohol. Hope they pull through... And did you hear about the first-grader who was kicked out of school for pointing his finger at some kids and yelling “bang“?
It made me think that we sure judge kids by a harsher standard today than when I was a carefree young terrorist.
Times sure have changed, by cracky. Back when teenagers ruled the world in the late 60s, the administrators at my high school were busy creating an experimental smoking lounge for students so we wouldn’t have to go outside to smoke. The experiment lasted less than a year, but still, in that social climate I can’t imagine any of our principals would have expelled a student for getting caught with a beer.
Looking in the rearview mirror from the age of Klebold and Harris, I shiver to think of how we parents would have been judged if today’s standards of zero tolerance were shipped to the days of our youth in the Wayback Machine.

Features Robert Downes After years of enduring the divisive blare of conservative and far-right views on commercial talk radio, Northern Michigan is finally getting a powerful new station that will air liberal viewpoints as well.
Broadcaster Rick Stone is bringing his even-handed format to the Grand Traverse area from Petoskey. With a 50,000-watt signal, listeners will get a more diverse mix of viewpoints loud and clear on WJML-AM-1210 in Traverse City and AM-1110 in Petoskey.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes You couldn‘t turn on your TV last week without seeing hour after endless hour of demented Cho Seung-Hui in fullblown Natural Born Killer pose, brandishing his weapons and mumbling his crazed manifesto.
After awhile, the endless montage of photos took on the quality of a recruitment poster for all of the disturbed and angry nutcases in America. No doubt, a legion of these guys managed to look up from playing their Doom or Grand Theft Auto video games long enough to think: Gee, maybe if I shoot up a school I‘ll be a big celebrity like Cho Seung-Hui... One wanna-be copycat killer was caught just last Thursday in California.
MSNBC and other networks are scrambling to do damage control in regard to airing the Cho videos, but they still don‘t seem to get it. The problem isn‘t that the videos were aired -- the problem is that they were played over and over, hour after hour, similar to the 9/11 jet crash videos. Or for that matter, the endless Don Imus apologies. It‘s like the networks get a case of obsessive-compulsive disorder on single issue stories these days and the rest of the news goes out the window.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes After he won the Oscar last month for his global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, former Vice President Al Gore was blindsided by an “inconvenient truth” of his own. Turns out Gore has a whopper of an electric bill -- averaging $1,359 per month.
A conservative think tank called the Tennessee Center for Policy Research claims that Gore’s 20-room mansion uses more electricity each month than the average American family uses in a year. Plus, the natural gas bills for Gore’s home and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year -- in balmy Tennessee. His combined electrical and gas bills for 2006 came to nearly $30,000.
Whoops...

Books Robert Downes Self-publishing has become a cottage industry in Northern Michigan with a slew of do-it-yourself authors making their mark on the literary world.
Here’s an update on who’s doing what on the shelves of local bookstores, borrowing freely from the authors’ press releases:

Murder in the Keweenaw
By Harley Sachs