Things I've Said (and Mostly Don't Regret)

Over the past 8 years I've had my words published a few places. Here are some of my greatest hits--or misses depending on who you ask.

Is Space Still the Place? Tracking Sun Ra (Feature, Propeller Magazine)

Phantom Lights, Chordae Tendinae (Album Review, Willamette Week)

A Borrowed Nostalgia (Editorial, The Oregonian)

Portland Trail Blazers Game Recap (trailblazers.com)

Psuedosix (Artist Interview)

My New Obsession (ESPN)

Whatever Happened to my Revolution?

Whatever Happened to my Revolution?
The rise and fall of the feminist rocker

By Devan Cook

Donning a purple wig, oversized sunglasses hiding her face and black boots laced up to her thighs, Lady Gaga leans back in a chair looking disinterested—until the interviewer asks her a question that suddenly makes her sit up. With a hint of condescension in her voice, she responds to his question of whether or not her overt sexuality distracts from her music:

“You see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music 'cause I love fast cars and fucking girls, you'd call me a rock star. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I'm a female, because I make pop music, you're judgmental, and you say that it is distracting. I'm just a rock star.”

A Borrowed Nostalgia

This is a piece I wrote that was featured on the Oregonian's website and NPR's 'This I Believe.'


I’m looking at a milk crate full of vinyl records. There are probably about 30 LPs in this worn, baby blue crate. While many of these records are over 40 years old, they are my newest musical purchases, most having been acquired in the past few months.

I worked at Music Millennium Northwest until it went out of business two years ago. It had been around since 1969. It survived transitions from records to 8-tracks to tapes to CD's, but it finally met its match with the MP3.

Confusion is Sex Music, Kill Your Idols.

Glass Candy at Rotture 11/20/09

The diehard fans trickled in first, and, at first, it felt like it was going to be a typical Glass Candy show. “Is that a guy or a girl? I’m going to go hit on her,” my friend Matt said as he walked over to a 6-foot beauty. And, like most Glass Candy shows, one felt like they were in that Blur song “Boys and Girls” with the lyrics:
“Girls who are boys/who like boys to be girls/who do boys like they're girls/ who do girls like they're boys”
In other words, it was confusing. Genders and sexualities weren’t exactly straight and narrow, and that’s exactly how we liked it. After all, Glass Candy’s music is a modern blend of new-wave/ italo-disco, and disco music sprung from the gay culture in the 1970’s. The discotheque was a safe haven for blacks and gays, and with this new wave of it, the sentiment is the same, boys who are girls and girls who are boys, and those of us that are girls who are girls but just want to dance, this was our place.

There Will Be Pie

One of my favorite holiday memories is from Thanksgiving 1995, the year I lived in Sequim, Washington...


“God I hate this shit. Look at it, where is the charm? Where’s the artistry?” My father watches the television in disgust as a giant Sonic the Hedgehog balloon floats through New York City.

“There you go, you see that? That’s what I like, good ‘ol Charlie Brown. See the difference girls?”

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade continues on TV, but my father has returned his attention to the bird in the oven.
“Christ, it’s just burning up! There’s no juice in these damn Butterball birds!” The turkey was donated to our family by the Seventh Day Adventist Church of Port Angeles, whom my father had lied to four months ago, convincing them that we were avid “Adventists” in order to milk them for freebies. He’d already burned bridges with the Catholics and Protestants, but he considered the Adventists to be his kind of people-- after all, even they knew Sunday is a perfect day for sleeping in. He was able to use his health problems as an excuse to not have to attend the Saturday services, but assured them he practiced the faith at home.

Missing Link

For a school assignment a few months ago I was told to write a profile on a stranger. I interviewed Nick, a long time skate buddy of my friend Jeff. Multiple times throughout the evening he caught me writing down his conversations in my notebook, and would stop mid sentence to ask me if he "sounded like an idiot." While many of the quotes I got from him were somewhat ludicrous and perfect for poking fun at him, it was a feigned ignorance on his part. Beneath his purposefully "dude-ish" surface he was actually one of the more brilliant people I've had the pleasure of interviewing in my life, along with his quick-witted girlfriend. Thanks Nick and Erin, you guys are amazing.

Missing Link: Girlfriend's, Weiner Dogs, and the Hidden Side of Nicholas Hyde

The door opens and Nick is standing there in gray sweats and a U of O sweatshirt with his hood pulled over his head, black leather slippers, and a can of cheap beer in one hand, but in his other arm he is cradling a little Weiner dog dressed in a faux fur purple zebra striped button coat. Our common thread Jeff—Nick’s skate buddy, my coworker-- gives out introductions, then Nick introduces his small pal: Link. “Girlfriend’s dog?” I ask, eying the blonde girl behind him in the kitchen. “No, he’s mine.”

Through the Eyes of a Cupcake

I once was voted "Most Likely to Succeed". Yep, 14 of my 24 fellow 8th graders at Cornville Elementary School thought that I, Devan Cook, was gonna be somebody. My teachers believed in me, too. Well, most of them. Mrs. Nelson, my kindergarten teacher, called up my mother one time to express concern about my learning abilities. She thought that I might need to be sent to the school where "special" kids go, as I was having difficulty cutting with scissors. This was when Mrs. Nelson learned I was left handed, unlike the pair she had tried to shove into my non-dominant paw.
Kindergarten teachers aside, the opinion was unanimous: I was gonna be the biggest claim to fame Cornville School had since Deborah Walley (best known for playing Gidget in the film Gidget Goes Hawaiian) directed our Christmas play.