About eight years ago camera crews from the Cascadia Media Collective caught protests, logging, police violence, civil unrest and a whole lot of people banding together to try to save the world. The film features footage from the WTO protests to Bush's inauguration, and according to Understory Productions "There will be something in this film to offend and inspire almost anyone."

Watching this film just may remind you that just because Barack Obama's the next president, doesn't mean that there won't be another Bush-like regime down the road someday.

So once you've rested up after your Thanksgiving Tofurkey, head on over to Cozmic Pizza this Sunday at 7:30 to see A Year in the Streets. Free.

Last year the energetic staff and volunteers at Save the Pets set a goal of finding homes for 100 pets during the holiday season. They met that goal, and this year together with West Coast Dog and Cat Rescue they plan to find homes for the holidays for 250 animals.

The groups, together with a plethora of other rescues around town, will be at Johnson Brothers Greenhouses in Coburg every Saturday and Sunday at from 11-3. You can find your dream dog or cat in all shapes, colors and sizes. There will also be arts and crafts, wreaths, special appearances and other nonprofits you can check out.

For more info or event updates go to http://www.northwestgardenplants.com or call Lori Smith (savethepetseugene@gmail.com) Save the Pets 686-2467 or Julie McDonnell, (lilly2beans@yahoo.com) West Coast Dog & Cat Rescue 337-2157.

If you want to support animal rescue but aren't ready to bring a Fido or a Fluffy home just yet, head on over to Lane County Animal Services' (LCAS) Laughs for Lassie benefit for LCAS at the Hult Center at 7 pm on Dec. 5. Tickets at the Hult Center office, $26.

There has been lots of talk and much grumbling over at MySpace Music, but perhaps the largest concern is the disappearance of the feature that allows you to download songs (by artists who authorize the download option) so you don't have to use MySpace's shitty media player. MySpace vows that this option will return at some point in the future. Meaning: In the year 2018, when the handful of remaining corporate record labels finally "get it," MySpace will again let artists give away their music for free if they so choose.

In the meantime, head over to DownloadHelper and download the free application, then add the extension to your Mozilla Firefox web browser. I repeat: This add-on only works with Mozilla Firefox at this time. When you go to a band's MySpace page the little DownloadHelper icon is activated if any of the tracks are available for streaming/downloading. This also works on YouTube (so you can download the song and not the damn static video) and a host of other sites. You just have to rename the tracks once downloaded. Sweet!

Still confused? Check out a helpful tutorial from a dude with a drawl who just loves his local hard rock bands:

First, The NYT made me laugh as I read the one-sentence descriptions of books on the best-seller lists (I *know* there's an intern who will be Very Happy when she reads that yes, people read her sentences ... and find them amusing), my favorite being

DESTINY KILLS, by Keri Arthur. (Dell Spectra, $6.99). A woman and a man with superhuman powers flee dangerous killers from Scotland.

Och, aye, bairns! Gang aft agly! (Or something like that.)

OK, admittedly, Trainspotting's language is intimidating, but if one has superhuman powers, should one have to flee "dangerous killers from Scotland"?

That was from an old NYT Book Review, by the way. Today's top description, or rather top mass-market paperback, is "THE DARKEST EVENING OF THE YEAR, by Dean Koontz. (Bantam, $7.99.) A woman who rescues golden retrievers is shadowed by an evil stranger."

I bet the doggies do some doggie saving business, don't you?

The most noticeable phenomenon on the mass-market list comes in a whopping dose of vampire comedy/mysteries by Charlaine Harris, with six, count 'em, six books on the 20-book list. That's not even counting #19, Kerrelyn Sparks' All I Want for Christmas Is a Vampire, all of which leads me to kind of lose my faith in human intelligence. (Because the front page of the paper apparently isn't painful enough to cause that to happen.)

Anyway, the real reason I began this post was the Correction section of "Weddings/Celebrations," which, yes, I read because I want to see teh gays getting married, and by the way, could the august paper possibly feature some female same-sex couples sometime, please? Or do women just not get married?

ANYWAY anyway, here are the correx:

A report last Sunday about the marriage of Anne-Cecilie Engell and Rob Speyer misspelled one of two names she uses as her hyphenated middle name. She is Lisbet Bastrup-Birk Engell, not Bastrub-Birk.

The Vows column last Sunday, about the marriage of Gillian Laub and Tahl Raz, reversed a phrase that the couple borrowed from the 1998 film "Shakespeare in Love" and used in their vows. It should have read, "come ruin or rapture," not "come rapture or ruin."

Let me get the first one, er, straight: The woman's name is Anne-Cecilie Lisbet Bastrup-Birk Engell?

Or, delicious thought, did the paper screw up again, and will it have to issue a correction next week saying, "A correction last Sunday about the marriage of Anne-Cecilie Engell and Rob Speyer contained an incorrect first name for Ms. Engell. She is Anne-Cecilie Bastrup-Birk Engell, not Lisbet Bastrup-Birk Engell"?

And the second one, well. Hee. I guess it's more euphonious, or it sounds more luck-inducing, to end on the upward trend of rapture.

Snotty Newspaper Moment: Guess what? This kind of stuff is only possible with the print edition. Online, I would never have seen these things out of the corner of my eye (or in the center, as it so happens with the best-seller lists).

So off, amusedly, to sleep.

For reasons related to the sour economy, Green Jelly will not perform at the WOW Hall on Dec. 1. Refunds available at place of purchase.

On Wednesday, Nov. 19, the Eugene Symphony announced that 38-year-old Bulgarian Danail Rachev had won the competition to become the symphony's seventh music director and conductor. I talked to Rachev the week before the news went public, and here's a short Q&A with him. (Hopefully, my longer article, for which I interviewed a number of folks, will be up later today or tomorrow. Swear it's a-comin' ... along with Gift Guide! By the way, this news is like the best possibly holiday or any day news for the Eugene Symphony. Rachev was superb with the musicians.)

Image of Rachev with the Eugene Symphony on Sept. 12, courtesy of the Eugene Symphony.

Danail Rachev on "A Very Good Car"
by Suzi Steffen
First of all, congratulations.
Thank you.

Tell me about your experiences with the musicians while you were here.
Well, I was very impressed with the way they are dedicated to playing great music, to playing an exciting performance. They seem absolutely devoted to playing well, and I felt that immediately, and once they understood that that’s what I wanted, the process was easy.

I watched you during rehearsals, and you seem flexible, interested in what the musicians have to say.
I think the time of the absolute dominators of a performance is [in the] past, and that’s the most important thing for me, that it’s a collaboration between a conductor and an orchestra. They watch me, see my instructions, and I listen to what they play and try to incorpoate it into my ideas about the piece.
It’s like we are chamber musicians, and we support each other.

Your wife has a good job with the Curtis Institute in Philly. I take it you’ll still live there.
Yeah, but I’m dedicated to spending as much time as possible in Eugene.

Can you tell me about the programming you have planned for the first season?
We started planning the season, with [Executive Director] Paul Winberg and [Operations and Education Director] Chris Collins, and we have created a draft of this season, but nothing is yet sure. I can’t tell you any details right now.

Do you plan to play more of a genre or composer, or do something different in a major way, than outgoing music director Giancarlo Guerrero?
No, no, one of the most important things for me is to continue this tradition of excellence in many ways — in the way the orchestra performs and connects with the community so that the concerts are well-attended and there’s a good connetion with the people and the patrons. I hope to continue the legacy of innovative programming that they had before. And of course I’m going to try to expand it, but I want this tradition to continue from the past. This orchestra, the Eugene Symphony, has a very good reputation within the musical community.

When you were here in September, you talked to me about how you’d had the experience of working with some of the best orchestras, and that was like driving a Maserati, and you didn’t want to go from that to driving a Saturn. So what car is the Eugene Symphony?
I think it’s one of the very good cars. In my career, I’ve had the opportunity of working with a variety of orchestras, not only Maseratis, I guess. I’ve worked with student orchestras as well as Dallas and the Philadelphia Orchestra. What I’m trying to do is use my experience with orchestras like Philadelphia to instill that sort of attitude that an orchestra like Philadelphia has. Of course, that orchestra has opportunities to recruit the best talent in the country, and there’s no way it’s the same in Eugene, but I hope to improve as much as I can in Eugene. My initial contract is for four years, and then we will see how things will continue, but hopefully more.

Anything else you want to say to Eugene?
I just want to thank everybody from the orchestra and the board and the staff and the guild, all these wonderful people I met in Eugene. Their passion for the orchestra is really something I felt immediately, and that attracted me to this position. I think that the interest of the people of the community makes the orchestra better. Their dedication to making their orchestra better is what makes this special.

"Unidentified human remains" to be precise were found at Pisgah/Buford yesterday, or so says the press release from the Lane County Sheriff's office this afternoon.

The human remains were found in a remote area of Mt. Pisgah by a work crew in the area.

The Sheriff's and Medical Examiner's Office are working to identify the remains and determine the cause and manner of death.

Word from the WOW Hall is that tonight's scheduled appearance by Mistah F.A.B. is canceled. No other details were given.