Bleah. Another sunny Friday on the heels of a week of miserable weather and I'm stuck in a cubicle instead of running around outdoors. To those of you celebrating or fortunate to be outside right now, have yourself a merry little holiday centered around heavy marijuana consumption.
Last Tuesday, Phil Stanford wrote a column about Portland's ongoing gallery of pricey, misguided civic improvements. The comments section accompanying the post quickly turned into a "heated discussion" and/or a "good ol' internet pissing match." Yeah, I was kinda, sorta one of the participants. His latest column in today's Portland Tribune calls out one of us for ruffling his feathers.
A huge problem facing Portland's dining establishments: "grupsters," yuppies and their reluctance to control their annoying offspring. On a recent sunny day, I was sitting out on the porch at the Goose Hollow when a group of four super-hip parents, all in their mid-30s, showed up dressed like they just stepped out of an ad for Threadless. With kids in tow, they launched a full-scale invasion of the porch, talking loudly about how the place was "owned by former mayor Vera Katz" (wrong!) while their moppets ran around screaming. Kai over at Metroblogging Portland has more on the phenomenon. If you head over there, be sure to check out the reader responses.
Thanks, Cho Seung-Hui. Not only did you kill dozens of people and traumatize untold amounts of others, the rest of us are going to have to listen to months of pundits, parents, officials and other reactionaries complain about and freak out over violent movies, video games and Hot Topic accessories. Why can't deranged mass-murderers ever obsess over, say, Failure to Launch instead of something like Oldboy? Just once I'd like to see a talking head point fingers at Sara Jessica Parker and/or Matthew McConaughey.
I guess it's only a matter of time until these restaurants start showing up here in the US. I wonder if they'll go over though. I don't know about you but I don't consider more than 10 minutes on the toilet to be an experience worth paying for.
And so ends another sub-mediocre Blazers season filled with drama and run-ins with the police but nary a playoff game. The future? It's either bright or dark, depending on who you ask.
Click here for a list of 60 things worth shortening your life for. How many of them have I done? I'd love to tell you but my mother knows about this blog. Hi, Mom!
Here's a blog devoted to restaurant logos of animals hurting themselves to put meat on customer's plates. I think the Blogosphere has finally run out of stuff to talk about. Alas, poor Clucky, we hardly knew ye...
