Gossip should have no friends

[May 16th, 2007] GUS JE T'AIME It still days before Southern France gets to see the premiere of Gus Van Sant's latest, Paranoid Park (see page 39), and months before it shows stateside. But those who want a oui bit of Gus action previously unseen in the states can get it right now on YouTube . Last year, Monsieur Van Sant contributed a li'l somethin'-somethin' to Paris, Je T'Aime , a collection of vignettes depicting 18 of Paris' 20 neighborhoods. That Frenchie film finally gets its Portland premiere Wednesday, May 30 , at the NW Film Center's Whitsell Auditorium. Gus' five-minute quickie, Le Marais , stars Portland's own Elias McConnell —the photographer in Elephant—French coeur-throb Gaspard Ulliel and Marianne Faithfull . Check it out by searching "Van Sant, Le Marais" on YouTube. Oh yeah—it's all in French, sans subtitles . Merde!

VLAD THE RETAILER Thanks, New York Times Magazine. Thanks for running your Sunday, May 13, story about the return of the View-Master after our moms threw out our plastic 3-D viewers (which were invented in P-town) years ago. Thanks for ruining Mother's Day. But you made one Portland resident very happy: Vladimir , the 29-year-old artist who created Vladmasters , longform stories told via the View-Master and musical cues. Vladimir, whose favorite creation is called "Lucifugia Thigmotaxis " and concerns cockroaches , bought her first View-Master in college. "It was a battle between a tyrannosaurus and a stegosaurus in 28 pictures, and then the volcanoes exploded at the end and killed all the dinosaurs," she told Scoop. "I was excited about telling these epic stories in completely the wrong format." Want your own Vladmaster? Six local retailers carry the $18-$20 gems (which tell click-lever tales based on the stories of Franz Kafka and Italo Calvino ) Reading Frenzy and the 3D Center for Art and Photography.

RADIO FREE AFRICA After five months as a live-music venue, lower Hawthorne's Langano Lounge—a.k.a. the basement of Jarra's Ethiopian Restaurant—is kaput as of May 31. [ED NOTE: To clarify: The bar's live music program is dead. The venue itself remains open.] The change was announced last weekend via email from the venue's booker, Ezra Fowler, who explained that several bar's staffers are putting in notice due to "internal strife" between workers and owners (who couldn't be reached for comment as of press time). "Basically, it's a walk-out," Fowler says. With nearly the entire bar staff gone, he's counting on Langano being an awfully rough place to run shows. " I feel that ownership will no longer continue to support our band-payment system and the current arrangements for sound, promotions...and scheduling," he explains. There seem to be no hard feelings between Fowler and the joint's owners of 28 years—he calls them "sweet" in the email—but he does add that they're "completely out of tune with the Portland independent music community." Ouch.

SCOOP UPDATE (Wednesday, Aug. 15): As of the end of July, Langano Lounge is now, once again, serving up live music 10 pm-2 am Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, courtesy of a new booker.