Robert Downes

Music Robert Downes Check out the new Next Best Thing show on ABC this summer and you could see Traverse City’s own Mark Staycer, competing for a $100,000 prize in his role as John Lennon.
Staycer cautions that his participation on the new celebrity impersonator show is not a done deal yet; he’s a semi-finalist still waiting to hear from ABC. But he did pass his audition in Orlando a couple of weeks ago “with flying colors.”
And, he beat out about 150 other top-notch celebrity impersonators from all over the country.
“They had everyone there, from someone like me who does this for a living, to a guy from the GM Tech Center who does an imitation of Jack Nicholson,” he says of the audition.
Auditions were also held in Las Vegas and New York. If his participation in the show is a go, then Staycer could be in Hollywood, producing the first program as early as May 1.

Features Robert Downes Members of the Cherry Capital Cycling Club have something to spin their wheels about this spring: the Traverse City-based club has a new website, a new racing division, a new bike map, and a pumped-up schedule of rides.
In early April, 35-40 members of the club kicked off the first Monday night ride of the season, streaming out Old Mission Peninsula in a rite of spring that dates back to the club’s formation in 1984.

Features Robert Downes The latest, greatest sport styles & technology
Bike paths and running trails across Northern Michigan are already filling up with weekend warriors, dreaming of summer.
What to wear? What to ride? What to do? Here are some ideas on the newest gear from sport specialists across the region:

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Thanks to the Traverse City Film Festival, some of us locals are a bit more tuned in to the value of documentary film. I dare say we’re even more in the know about documentaries now than cinema hipsters and film connoisseurs living in artsy places like SoHo or L.A.
With its focus on documentaries, the festival has brought us everything from the joys of being eaten by grizzly bears to the perils of obsessing over crossword puzzles.
And there‘s no better tool for understanding the war in Iraq.
Documentaries on the war take us into the hearts and minds of the soldiers and civilians caught in Iraq. Watch a few of these films and you’ll soon discover how miserable the mainstream TV network coverage is by comparison.

Features Robert Downes When Carly Robinson’s son Isaak was diagnosed with autism while still a toddler, she put her life on hold to put her heart and soul into helping him overcome the mysterious disorder.
Today, Isaak Crawford, 6, is making good progress on his skills at communication and reaching out to others, thanks to years of participation in a Cadillac School District program for autistic kids and the efforts of his family.
And Carly, 29, is doing her best to keep him on track and to reach out to other parents, particularly this April, which is Autism Awareness Month. A waitress at Mackinaw Brewing Co. in downtown Traverse City, she’s selling T-shirts at the venue for the second year in a row, with all proceeds going to the Autism Society of America.

Music Robert Downes Two Northern Michigan songwriters are enjoying the thrill of a lifetime as their original tunes skyrocket up the list of a protest song website established by Neil Young.
The “Living With War” link at www.neilyoung.com features more than 1,500 protest songs, many of which have an anti-war theme. Players featured on the site range from the likes of J.J. Cale, Eric Clapton and Son Volt, to Northern Michigan’s own Adair Correll and Les Dalgliesh.
Last week, Correll’s song, “Georgie Porgie the Can Do Guy,” moved up to #26 on the site, while Dalgliesh’s song “The Cost of Comfort” moved up to #33.
“I’m not sure why all this is happening, but both Les and I moved up again,” says Correll, best known in the region for his work as a founder and facilitator of Songwriters in the Round. “I don’t think this will put us in the rich and famous category, but for a couple of unknowns it has been kind of fun.”

Music Robert Downes Best Blues Band: Bacon & Eggs
The Bacon & Eggs blues band have honed a reputation as one of Northern Michigan’s hardest-working groups over the past few years. They’re currently performing nearly every week at venues ranging from Harbor Springs, Charlevoix and Benzie County all the way to Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.
The band performs Chicago-style blues, a genre with an urban edge. They’ve also distinguished themselves by playing outside the box with their own original songs and innovative take on the blues.
Bacon & Eggs have a sense of authenticity -- they’re not “blues bores” or poseurs. They have a crisp and confident laid-back style that lures in the listener and then springs a surprise with a dual-guitar attack that builds a sense of power and suspense. Nor do they neglect the classics -- late in a Bacon & Eggs show, you’ll find the band cutting loose with a rocking take on blues standards that lights up the crowd.
Recently, the band recorded their second album of 10 songs, “Out of Touch,” with all tunes written by Dan “Lumpy Jones” Chrystler, who performs on vocals and guitar. Rounding out the band are Donn Johnson on guitar, Freddie “G” Guetschow on drums, Matt Marsh on bass/vocals, and Phil “Mississippi” Coryell on harp. Keyboardist Tim Wire lent his talents to the new CD. Check them out at venues such as the Big Eazy in TC, the Flight Deck in Charlevoix, and the Villa Marine in Frankfort. For info, check out
www.baconandeggsbluesband.com.

Music Robert Downes One of the original voices of rock in Northern Michigan is back at center stage with a new band and hopes of capturing a new generation of fans.
After several years of casting his fate with the Detroit rock scene, singer/guitarist Tim Callaghan is back in Traverse City with Fairchild, a new glam rock band that includes the talents of Aaron Wolinski on bass, Pete Birchler on guitar and Mike Dunbar on drums. The band plays its debut show at the Loading Dock in Traverse City this Saturday, March 31.
Why the name, Fairchild?
“It’s a tip of the hat to my son, Duncan,” Callaghan says of his seven-year-old. “He’s the fairest child in the land.”
Callaghan says the group will be performing cuts from an album he recorded in Detroit last year, some of which will be familiar to Northern Michigan listeners. “I’ve reformed the band here in Northern Michigan with new players and went for the ‘A’ list of musicians,” he notes.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes It looks as though the Great Math Rebellion of 2007 is starting to wind down in Traverse City as school officials and parents do the arithmetic of gettin’ their heads together and solving the problem. Whew!
Some kids reportedly can’t understand the new “reformed math,” which employs a new problem-solving process. Ditto for parents, trying to help out.
I asked an expert what she thought of the high school math program: my daughter Chloe, who graduated a couple of years ago and is now in business school (I’m proud to say). She said she liked her high school Compass math program because it taught her how to work out problems in the real world... although in new ways that might be adrift from what us parents recall from our readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic daze...
So, different strokes for different folks.

Random Thoughts Robert Downes Are you a spiritual person? This being our annual “Mind-Body-Spirit” issue, it seems a good time to ask.
What does it mean to be “spiritual”?
That’s a question my generation has struggled with since the ’60s, when we read “Siddhartha” in college, discovered yoga, transcendental meditation, the I Ching, turned Jesus freak, joined communes... But, being Americans, our quest was more about style than substance, so when the next big thing came along (disco, the “Me Generation,” the running boom, Reaganism... ), we bailed out on spirituality.
Plus, no one could ever quite figure out what it was to be “spiritual,” other than acting kind of dreamy and yearning to live “up there” in a disembodied existence, as vacant as a glass of water in Buddha’s kitchen. The rock group Procol Harum summed-up the mumbo-jumbo of the spiritual quest in their song about a wise old yogi telling a young seeker the meaning of life: “Oh, my son -- life is like a beanstalk, isn’t it?”
Right.

Features Robert Downes Stretch out on one of the thermal massage beds at Migun of Northern Michigan and you’ll find yourself immersed in an oohs! and ahhs! sensation, like a warm jade roller coaster trickling up and down your spine.
A series of five jade massage heads move up and down a belt, traveling your back from head to toe as you lie in the twilight of a quiet room. Infrared heat radiates through the bulbs, penetrating as much as five inches into your body, stimulating your muscles, nerves and bloodstream. After 35 minutes of deep tissue ecstasy, you arise, as limp and relaxed as a wet rice noodle.

Books Robert Downes Anne-Marie Oomen is one of those irresistible writers whose work always packs a surprise. A poet and a playwright with the easyAA warmth that comes from a country upbringing, she weaves an endlessly inventive orbit, enveloping the sphere of life in rural Northern Michigan.
Her latest work is “Uncoded Woman,” a collection of more than 60 poems. The poems tell the story of a young woman named Bead, who is “running away from her life in a stolen pickup.”
Bead (short for Beatrice) seems to be seeking shelter from the storm of her life with a new beginning along the coast of Lake Michigan. She picks up a Native American hitch-hiker named Barn and accepts his invitation to stay at his trailer in the Glen Arbor area (we know because they have “charred burgers at Art’s Bar”). Under her new friend’s guidance, Bead renews her life, learning to fish on Lake Michigan.
Accompanying each poem is a semaphore message from the maritime “International Code of Symbols” used to signal ships at sea in the days before radio. Bead stumbles across the codebook at the lifesaving station in Glen Haven in Leelanau County and recognizes its blunt signals as metaphors for the perplexities of her own life. When she discovers a body floating in the lake, the cumulative codes help build a sense of drama and suspense in the reader’s mind. The mystery forces Bead to face her own demons. How will she decode her own life?

Random Thoughts Robert Downes As a former smoker, I can’t say enough bad things about this evil addiction. It kills 500,000 Americans every year and is surely as addictive as heroin. In a rational world, smoking would be outlawed completely as being as dangerous as cocaine in the long run.
And yet, I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when Grand Traverse County voted against taking the steps which would result in a county-wide ordinance to ban smoking in public places.
Why? Because as county commissioner Dick Thomas stated in a recent Record-Eagle article, such a ban would mean “more big brotherism.” And brother, we’ve got too much of that in America as it is.
Unfortunately, there’s a streak of neo-puritanism that runs deep in our country which knows no ideology. For every conservative who’s worried about what you do in the privacy of your own bedroom, there’s a progressive counterpart hell-bent on legislating morality “for your own good.” And both political camps tend to have paid, professional advocates working full time to chip away at individual liberties.

Features Robert Downes Desperate out-of-work men, bare their souls (and other stuff) to make money to feed their families in a tough economy. Sounds like Michigan, doesn’t it? In fact, “The Full Monty,” being staged this week at the Old Town Playhouse (OTP) in Traverse City strikes close to home when you consider that Michigan has been “stripped” of 25% of its manufacturing jobs since the late ‘90s.
In the original film, a group of laid-off British steelworkers decide to stage a burlesque show to raise funds to feed their families. They’re inspired by their wives, who enjoy watching male strip shows on “girls night out.” The suspense in the film builds on whether the guys will have the guts to drop their trousers at the end of the show.
That “will they or won’t they?” question is part of the tease for OTP’s musical version of the film. In any event, the play has some interesting parallels to Michigan’s own plight; it’s not hard to imagine a group of laid-off factory workers in Northern Michigan resorting to the same gambit.
“The ‘Full Monty’ was Americanized when the film became a musical,” says director Michelle Dungjen. “It’s set in Buffalo, New York, so there are some parallels that are ironic to what Michigan is going through.”

Books Robert Downes Got Energy
Moving away from fossil fuels and nuclear power is the goal of author Hermann Scheer, whose book, “Energy Autonomy” (EARTHSCAN 2007) finds the solution in a scattershot reliance on renewable energy schemes.
A member of the German Bundestag (parliament) and president of the European Association for Renewable Energy, the author is also chairman of the World Council for Renewable Energy.
With credentials like those, it’s no wonder Scheer is passionate in the search for alternative sources of power, including biofuels, solar and wind power, to replace the destructive aspects of burning coal or building new nuclear power plants. Scheer argues for a decentralized approach to providing local power, using renewable sources that are close to home.
“Energy Autonomy” is not an easy read; it’s scholarly in tone and Scheer lacks Al Gore’s skill at putting zest in his subject. Perhaps it’s the translation. But if you’re charged up over the quest for a new way to power the world, this “Hero for the Green Century” (Time Magazine) offers an encyclopedic overview.