Measure 74 failed (WTF, people?) but Johnny K, AKA "The Kitz," AKA Johnny Bluejeans, AKA the Next Governor of Oregon made it back into office by the skin of his teeth over "The Man Who Once Set the NBA Record for the Most Missed Shots During One Consecutive Trip to the Foul Line." A former classmate of mine at Wilson High School, Will Rasmussen, lost his bid to snag a seat in the Oregon Legislature to a woman who calls herself "Hot Coupon Mama" on Twitter. And the Republicans snagged the House but the forces of hope/goodness/golden light continue to march onward.

All in all, things could worse right now.

It's been an interesting week over here. I spent Election Night embedded with the Oregon Democrats over at the Hilton. I met Steve Novick, an impossibly friendly guy who radiates good will out of every pore. He came over to look at my laptop for an update on the governors race before two gorgeous women pulled him aside to chat. Bill Bradbury spent the evening zooming through the crowd on a Segway.

Among the evening's highlights: Kitzhaber marching into the ballroom for an enthusiastic speech. "I'm in the same spot Senator Merkley was at this hour back in 2008," he said. At that time, he was down by 2,000 votes or more to Chris Dudley. Sure enough, the turnout in Multnomah County put him over the edge, leaving Dudley to conceded and chug margaritas out at El Ranchito out in Lake Oswego 20 hours later.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to briefly meet Portland mayor Sam Adams. While I have my problems with his behavior and many of his proposals, there's no denying that the guy has "presence." He confidently marched into the office where I'm interning this term like a lion. "Hi, I'm Sam," he said with a voice that oozed pure confidence as he reached across my desk to shake my hand. He was traveling with an entourage of 20-somethings and had a grip that could bend steel.

Now I'm sitting over at the Fehrenbacher Hof coffee house where former mayor Bud Clark is outside raking leaves on another golden autumn morning here in the City of Roses. He and his family own three businesses in the Goose Hollow neighborhood. He tossed a big smile my way as he lifted up a garbage can full of leaves. The man's damn near 80 years old. I nodded politely back, wishing I'd had the guts to talk to him. Inside, I chatted with one of the baristas about him while she wiped up a hazelnut mocha. "Yeah, he comes by all the time to tidy up," she said. "He's so adorable."

On my way to class, I chatted with Mr. Clark for a bit about the coffeehouse and the failing newspaper industry, strangely enough. He was sitting at a table outside enjoying the sun with a pint of brew.

I feel like I've been living in the Portland-equivalent of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles since Tuesday. Here's hoping I encounter the ghost of Tom McCall next.

Labels: politics

A few colleagues of mine over at JESS3, a creative interactive agency based in DC, collaborated with Yahoo News! to come up with a fairly nifty "infographic" for the midterm elections. They received something like 8 million responses to various political questions. The results of their study provide an interesting point of reference to what actually happened on Tuesday night. Those they queried were all big fans of California's Prop 19, were pessimistic that Harry Reid could hang on to his post in Nevada and, strangely enough, really liked Arizona's immigration laws.

Here's a link to the graphic. Keep up the great work, guys.

Labels: politics

I'm currently stationed three floors below street level in a large ballroom in the belly of the downtown Portland Hilton. When I first got here, the mood was anxious. Now, after early results showed Kitzhaber slamming Dudley at the polls, everybody's joyous and slamming back beers. Poor Dudley. At least he still holds the NBA record for the most missed free throws during a single trip to the foul line.

But KGW's results claim they're neck and neck with Dudley in the lead. Who to believe?

I'll be tweeting throughout the evening down here as people continue to trip over my feet and bump into my laptop. Feel free to follow all of that over at...

http://twitter.com/anotherpdxblog

Fingers crossed for the Dems tonight....

Labels: politics

Is this the face of the pro-marijuana movement in Oregon?





What you see here is the entrance to the Portland headquarters of the "Yes on Measure 74" campaign. It's tucked away in the parking lot of a tattoo parlor at the corner of SE 67th and Foster. The office isn't visible to passing traffic on the main thoroughfare. I drove over there last Monday afternoon. No one was inside and it seemed to be hidden, as if all involved were ashamed to be seen, out in public, supporting of the measure.

And that seems to be the case for the pro-pot movement at large in the states. Plenty of people support outright legalization and many more agree that the War on Drugs has been a farce. This country's ridiculous continued criminalization of weed has led to an intense series of clashes between feuding drug lords in Mexico that have resulted in thousands of deaths.





An article in Time Magazine from 2008 includes a poll that claims that 42% of adult US citizens have at least tried marijuana. Many Americans love weed and they're going to keep smoking it no matter how much its cultivation ravages our neighbors to the south. I'm sure you've heard these arguments before. The time has come, hell, it came 20 years ago, to finally legalize pot in the United States.

But yet the very topic, even medicinal marijuana, remains taboo. I asked several friends and family members if they'd be voting in favor of Measure 74. They all said yes but none of them were willing to stick a "Yes on 74" sign on their property or a sticker in the back window of their cars. Why is that?

Because marijuana is an illegal drug in this country and many of us have grown up watching commercials like the one below that demonizes it, putting weed on the same shelf next to meth and cocaine.




I'd go so far as to argue that weed is more harmless than alcohol. If anything, this country should have stuck with Prohibition but legalized marijuana. From a governmental stand-point, doesn't it make more sense to allow your citizens access to a drug that makes them goofy and mellow instead of sloppy, overconfident and prone to violence? Just saying....

It'll be interesting to see what will happen if California manages to pass Proposition 19 next week. Will the rest of the western states fall into line like dominoes? Will the issue make it to the Supreme Court? Could we be a few short years away from legalized marijuana in this country?

Well, here's hoping...

Labels: marijuana, politics

How quickly Americans have forgotten the Bush-era. The rampant corruption. The foolish wars. The fact that the insolence and incompetence of that administration led to New Orleans nearly being wiped off the map. Tonight I walked down NE MLK past a group of protesters holding signs that said things like "I Was Hating Obama Before It Was Cool!" One of them was screaming at passing traffic. A lady driving by him in a Volkswagen Bug jumped in her seat and nearly swerved into the other lane when he spat at her through an open window.

Sigh..."Teabaggers." Let's pray that the president doesn't do something REALLY bad and worthy of impeachment like getting a BJ in the Oval Office.

Is it really that easy to overlook the fact that the Democrats have actually accomplished things over the past few years? Supposedly, this Congressional Session was the most productive in half of a century, according to the Associated Press.

Let's go down the list, shall we? US troops are finally leaving Iraq, strides have been made towards healthcare reform and the Dems kinda, sorta saved this country from plunging headlong into a Depression that would have made our ongoing economic woes look like a night at the Playboy Mansion. Obama's biggest mistake was that he promised more than he could reasonably deliver during the 2008 election cycle. So many people painted him as a Christ figure that would magically wash away the despair of eight years of merciless Republican rule with a wave of his hand. The bar was set a million-miles too high for good ol' Barry.

I volunteered to work as a greeter at the Kithaber rally at the Convention Center earlier today. I'm not a huge fan of the Democratic candidate for governor and, I must confess, I didn't vote for him. I wasn't about to fill-in an oval for Chris Dudley though, for all of the obvious reasons. I decided to vote for my family's cat, Harry, instead. I think he would make a better leader than either Dudley or Johnny "This State is Ungovernable" K. At least our feline is adept at catching spiders. I went down there for Obama and "the liberal cause" or whatever you want to call it.

The afternoon began well, at least. There was a warm/happy vibe in the air as I headed down to the Convention Center. The crowd was buzzing, the sun was shining and, overall, it was reminiscent of Obama's stunning speech down on the Waterfront Park back in May of 2008. Would there be enough room inside for everyone? Would we have to usher spectators into a side-hall to watch the rally on a closed-circuit screen? Everybody was just so dang optimistic and upbeat.

At 4 PM the doors opened and the crowd trickled in past security. I stood off to the side and my duty was to answer questions and help the crowd. I must have said, "Yup, head on down the stairs to the convention hall" no less than 5,000 times. When I headed downstairs to see if there was seating available in the bleachers for a disabled woman, that's when I noticed something foul afoot. People were shoving their way in. The crowd was impatient and irritable, a far cry from the happy masses a few years back. Who can blame them? After having their "Pie in the Sky" hopes for Obama dashed over the course of the last two years, on top of the fact that they were being ushered into a gloomy, concrete hall that looked like a warehouse?

An hour later it was obvious that Obama, once a shining beacon of hope and change that drew 80,000 or so people to the waterfront, no longer had enough magic left to fill a 15,000 capacity hall on the eastbank of the Willamette. My fellow volunteers were bored and chatting among themselves as the line died down. A flustered woman was trying to get the attention of an indifferent usher, not a volunteer, who was on the clock. "I really need to get out of here," she sputtered. Without a word, he waved her off and kept walking.

So I decided to intervene as she began to panic. She was a teacher at a local school who had volunteered to escort four of her students to the rally. She had lost them after a bathroom break. I did my best to calm her down. Her hopes of finding them in the crowd downstairs was nonexistent and the eldest student wasn't picking up his cell phone. Her plan was to go outside where she could hear over the crowd in case they called. Members of PPD working the front doors weren't willing to let her leave for reasons involving "national security." Because no one else seemed to care about her dilemma, I grabbed another volunteer and headed downstairs to attempt to get her where she needed to be.

It was obvious that this wasn't going to happen with only a vague idea of where they were located. Long story short, one student finally called her and they worked out a rendezvous point.

On my way towards the escalator, an elderly woman pulled me aside. She had a thick envelope of prayers that she wanted to personally deliver to the president. "No one will even listen to me about this," she said with a sigh. I explained that I was just a lowly volunteer and, as nicely as I could, I told her, in all likelihood, there was no chance that the Secret Service was going to let her hand the Leader of the Free World a strange envelope. Undaunted, she wandered off in search of someone else to ask.

Once back upstairs, I found the cops breaking down the security scanners and most of my fellow volunteers gone. "Yeah, everybody just trickled away," one of them told me. "They didn't thank us for coming or anything."

Indifference and apathy, two things that are definitely plaguing the Democratic party these days, or at least their supporters. The cold shoulders of the staff, the treatment of the teacher and the envelope of prayers left me feeling sour. I took a seat on the carpeted steps outside of the 2/3s-full convention hall and gloomily checked my email. "What's wrong," another volunteer asked. "I'm thinking of leaving," I said. "This is just sad." "I know," he acknowledged. "I gave up my entire day for this in the middle of midterms. I'm thinking of bagging it too."

I looked up towards the skylight and the fading sun outside- what's sure to be one of the last warm days of the year. "Should I stay in here, in this concrete bunker filled with lethargic Democrats," I wondered. "All of them half-heartedly cheering for a candidate for governor they don't believe in?" I wandered back inside and spotted two girl picking through a stack of neglected, "homemade" signs made by organizers. They said things like "I'M FROM JEFFERSON COUNTY AND I'M VOTING FOR KITZHABER!" The girls opted to leave them behind and wandered back into the crowd.

Faux. Homemade. Signs.

Is this par for the course at political rallies? I have no idea but that was enough for me. I walked back to my car down SE Grand past the Teabaggers screaming at rush hour traffic and a streetcar expansion project that no one seems to want. Past the Migrant Labor compound and past the tired faces at a food shelter. One homeless guy nodded at me as I passed, with a look that seemed to say, "Shit, son. You look even more depressed than I am." Down on I-84, traffic was backed up for a mile.

So, yeah, the experience left me feeling pretty downhearted and disenfranchised, as if the storm clouds were gathering and the bad ol' days of Bush and Cheney were about to return again. "Great, a Congress packed with obstructionist Republicans and another two years of jack squat getting done," I muttered. A famous passage from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas came to mind and I was feeling biter enough to tweak it for 2010.

""We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the late 2000s. That was the fatal flaw in Barack Obama's trip. He crashed around America selling "hope" and "change" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager Americans who thought they could buy back the American Dream for a vote. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Obama took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style... a generation of permanent cripples forever stuck on unemployment in a land with no more careers or union wages, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of liberalism in the 21st century: that modern American society is fair and that, with a little help from the government, everyone has a real shot at being successful in this country."

I felt better after grabbing a cheap taco at Por Que No! on Hawthorne, where my fellow diners were completely oblivious to the outside world and talking about things that had absolutely nothing to do with politics. The restaurant's sound-system was tuned into a sappy soft rock station. A "Mexi-Coke" and Elton John's "Your Song" left me feeling a bit better. I jumped in the car and heard the last few lines of Obama's speech on KPOJ. I'll paraphrase it here:

"You give up now and we lose. Knock on doors. Make phone calls. Talk to your friends. Get them to vote. We're come far in two years and we can't let our efforts die. America can be great again...."

Well, here's hoping, especially if we finally get around to legalizing pot in this flippin' country. Hope? Pfffft! Keep dope alive!

Labels: marijuana, politics

In the words of Doc Brown: "Well, I figured, what the hell."

I submitted this video to the It Gets Better Project's website earlier this evening. I wonder how long it will stay up there. After all, I kinda, sorta advised bullied teenagers to fight back against their tormentors with slander. Oh, and I also suggested that they should take up smoking.... CIGARETTES!

Just doing my part to educate and inspire the youth of America!

Labels: politics

Like everyone else, I'm appalled by the recent slew of suicides among tormented gay teens in the United States. I've been a fan of Dan Savage's frank, honest and all around amazing column Savage Love since it arrived here in town via The Portland Mercury back in 2000. I admire the efforts of him and his partner to start the "It Gets Better" YouTube campaign, which has, in just a few weeks, received massive amounts of attention and hundreds of videos from successful gays who endured plenty of harassment during their high school years.

But there's one thing that bugs me about this whole thing: why should these teens wait? Why should they endure YEARS of bullying from their peers and the indifference of lazy or cruel families, teachers and/or school administrators? Look back over the course of American history. What led to effective social change for everyone from the founding fathers to members of the Civil Rights Movement? Action. The Boston Tea Party, the Women's Suffrage Movement, Martin Luther King's march on Washington. Expecting these poor teenagers to merely ENDURE these horrors is unreasonable.

I'm not the sort of guy brave enough to film himself discussing his own high school experiences like the courageous souls on YouTube, such as Fort Worth City Councilman Joel Burns who's video is receiving huge amounts of attention today on CNN (they aired the entire thing a bit ago). Still, here goes....

I'm not gay but that didn't stop plenty of bullies I dealt with at Robert Gray Middle School and Wilson High School here in Portland from labeling me "faggot." I was the scrawniest kid in my class and I graduated from Wilson weighing a grand total of 127 pounds, which is pretty frickin' lanky for someone 6 feet tall. PE class was a living hell for me. I managed to make it through 3 years of it at Robert Gray due to efforts of a teacher who knew what I was going through and, despite being an overgrown jock, had sympathy on me. I'll never forget his words when, with me in tears after getting pegged in the head by a volleyball in the 7th grade. He pulled me aside and broke out a speech I'm sure he had used on plenty of pre-teens like me over the years.

"Yeah, this game is hard, kid, but it'll be worth it. You'll get better at this volleyball thing and you'll be glad you stuck with it. One day, be it five years or ten down the road, somebody cute's gonna come into your life and they're gonna ask you to play volleyball. If you don't get back out there right now you're gonna have to tell them that you don't know how. And they're gonna think you're a schmuck."

It was enough to get me back in the game but, for what it's worth, no one has EVER asked me to play volleyball, cute or otherwise.

Freshman PE at Wilson was a different story. My new "coach" didn't have a shred of a soul left after years of screaming at teenagers on the gridiron. He seemed to delight in the torment the jocks in class caused me. During a two week course on wrestling, among the worst two weeks of my life, he ignored my pleas when another student, among the most rotten bullies at Wilson, put me in a "full pretzel." This punk held me in it so long I endured weeks of back pain afterward. "Hey, guys," he blathered to his friends. "Motherfucker's in some pain right now." They all thought this was hilarious.

Something beyond my spine snapped that day. I spent the rest of year finding subtle ways to get back at the coach. I'd sneak out of the locker room after attendance was taken or conveniently forget my sneakers at home during basketball week, sitting out games because all I had with me with was a pair of Birkenstocks. One morning, I decided to slowly jog during a race around the Wilson track. This pissed the coach off so badly that he screamed at me in front of all the other students and demanded that I spend the rest of the class sitting on the bleachers. When I approached him afterward to discuss this he yelled, "GET OUT OF MY FACE! I DON'T EVEN WANT TO LOOK AT YOU RIGHT NOW!" I trotted off to Algebra, savoring this small victory. My PE grade for that semester? A C+...the best C+ I have ever received.

During those years I was repeatedly punched in the halls, endured plenty of name-calling ranging from "nerd" to "fag" and was routinely spit on by one troubled brat in a math class. When I complained to the teacher she literally stared at me with weary, exhausted eyes. Without a word, she went back to reading a romance novel. If I can think of any single anecdote that sums up everything sick, sad and wrong with the US Educational system, it's this.

But, as Dan Savage advises a decade later, I put up with it. Then, during junior year, I decided to fight back, not with fists but with words.

I ran for Student Body President. I lost to a jock despite assurances from plenty of people that I had actually won the race. I'm still convinced that the Vice Principle conveniently "overlooked" my votes in order to allow a more suitable candidate into office. I ran again for Senior Class President, won this time around and, like the mischievous little shit that I was quickly becoming, I did everything in my power to subvert various school events. I insulted jocks in the middle of a rally attended by the Blazers' Damon Stoudamire, did a ear-shattering rendition of the school fight song at a school-wide assembly. In my most misguided and vengeful moment, I told my class during our graduation (in front of a crowd of 1,000 people in the Wilson Stadium, including former mayor Vera Katz) that they were all destined to lead doomed and unfulfilled lives in the suburbs. "This is good as it's ever going to get, guys. Hope you enjoyed the ride!"

Needless to say, members of my cabinet tried to have me impeached repeatedly.

But this wasn't enough. I landed on the staff on the student newspaper, The Statesman and because of a super cool teacher who looked the other way, published various articles mocking everything in sight. When he came to his senses and blocked the publication of one of my more ridiculous editorials, I decided to publish an underground newspaper using Quark on the classroom's Macintoshs. I put out 20 copies and was quickly called into the principle's office. When he told me I might be expelled for my actions, I mentioned all the torment I had endured over the years. When he said he would "sleep on it and consider what to do with me," I suggested that I'd be calling the media after school.

And that's what I did. I left a message for a staff reporter at The Oregonian and spoke to an editor at Willamette Week. He patiently listened to my story and, I'll never forget this, told me "call me back when you get expelled. THEN you'll have a story worth going to press with!"

When one kid, a die-hard Christian, threatened to kill me for some of the comments I published, I told him I'd return to him as a ghost, possess him, get him addicted to crack, get him infected with AIDS and so on. This not only shut him up but I saw the sort of fear in his eyes that he had conjured-up in so many of his victims.

In the end, I received a one day suspension and handed the paper off to another long-tormented misfit pal, who made it bigger and better...before getting kicked out of school temporarily himself. The paper eventually landed in the hands of our friend Cory who carried the torch after we graduated. He went even further with the project and was expelled, despite an outcry from the local press. Meanwhile, a well-connected son of a wealthy lawyer, received a slap on the hand for a prank that destroyed the floor of the cafeteria. That pampered prince? Yeah, he's trying to become a politician right now. I'd love to tell you his name but, honestly, he was always nice to me. I'm glad to see that he's running for public office rather than follow his father into the world of corporate law.

So, to wrap this up, fight back, kids. Get on the internet. Bully the bullies. Publish papers on Xerox paper and distribute them in lockers and bathrooms before school. Create Twitter accounts, make fake Facebook profiles for your tormentors. Take all the awful bile these jerks toss on you and give it right back them. If you're really feeling bold, grab all the other drama kids, nerds, tweekers, band geeks, dorks, choir pussies and losers and stage a sit-in the principle's office if your school's administration is too indifferent to stick up for you. Call the media. They love this sort of thing.

Don't wait. Make it better. Right fucking now.

Or bide your time, kick back, and enjoy a heapin' helpin' of Schadenfreude in a few years when the lives of some of those bullies don't work out so well. The last time I checked, the kid who spit on me has been in and out of jail over the past decade.

IT GETS WORSE

Labels: politics

I participated in a panel on KPSU's The Debate Hour last weekend. Among the issues discussed: should women in the military be allowed to serve on submarines, was PPD's actions in the death of Aaron Campbell racially motivated, should pole dancing become an Olympic sport and what's the best way to cure Greece's lagging economy. The panel's verdicts: yep, nope, yep and...I can only remember my own lame suggestion (that the former owner of Greek Cusina and the restaurant's inflatable octopus head overseas to host a bake sale).

It was interesting to compare KPSU's studio to the one I used as a KWVA DJ at the University of Oregon back in the day. Both have fairly spartan setups. KWVA is housed in a former bathroom on the nearly forgotten mezzanine level of U of O's EMU. KPSU is buried in the basement of the downtown campus' SMU. Students "run the board" while hosting shows and seem to have the same trouble operating each station's call-in system. I volunteered at KWVA for something like three years and never really got the hang of putting listeners on the air.

A tip of the hat goes out to The Debate Hour's host, Captain AP (the bloke in the Giants' cap). All sixty-two minutes of the show can be downloaded over here on KPSU's website. Like a lot of people, I can't stand the sound of my own voice so I only managed to make it through the first three minutes.

Labels: politics, radio

On Sunday night I found myself in a downtown Vancouver sports bar surrounded by people covered in red maple leafs. The leaves covered their hats, their boots, their shirts and their jackets. They even had temporary maple leaf tattoos on their faces. We had all gathered together to watch a men's hockey game between the US and Canada. While there were other Americans in the room, I was apparently the only one not decked out in red, white and blue. With the US in the lead I wasn't about to announce my national heritage, especially given how fast my Canadian cohorts were tearing through the contents of their pint glasses.

Little separated them from wild animals at this point and even the staff didn't want to intervene in the melee. Instead of kicking me out after I stumbled down the stairs and slammed into him, a manager helped me up and nudged me towards the bar. Over the course of the second two periods, only one patron was kicked out and that was for puking all over himself and a table.

After a near comeback, an empty net goal by the Americans sealed their win and drained all the life out of the place. Moments prior, I was watching a woman in an aviator hat jump around on a stool while madly waving a Canadian flag. Now she was slumped over at a table staring into a half-empty pint of beer. A drunk in a jersey slung his arm around me and lamented this sad state of affairs. "It's ok, man," he slurred. "We'll get in the finals, we're gonna get the gold. This is *our* game, eh?" I nodded and shrugged, afraid to open my mouth. If I made a mistake such as inadvertently pronouncing "about" as anything but "aboot," my true identity as an American citizen would have been revealed. This guy would have no doubt started shrieking like one of the clones from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Or not. A table full of Americans began cheering when the clock went down to zero and one of them even did a little dance. The Canadians only glared in return. They paid their tab and managed to escape the bar without incident.

During our stint at the 2010 Winter Olympics, my colleagues and I stayed with a few Canadian relatives. One of our hosts wanted to know why we hadn't brought along USA paraphernalia or at least a tiny American flag. After all, European tourists and the locals had absolutely no reservations about displaying their nationalistic pride so why should we? Over the course of our six days in Canada we encountered plenty of Germans decked out in gear from their native land. Numerous Norwegians were running around town dressed in viking hats. One of them even had enough national pride and competitive spirit coursing through his veins to carry a large bone with him, merrily conking spectators from other countries gently on the head during photo opps.

So why not us? Continued guilt from the Bush-era, I guess, plus we're not the sort of people that typically want to draw a lot of attention to ourselves on unfamiliar ground. Furthermore, we witnessed a father and his young daughter get heckled by locals in a Sky Train station for wearing Uncle Sam hats. I don't know if there have been any acts of violence between Americans and Canadians at the Olympic games but perhaps our paranoia was completely unwarranted. At least we weren't alone. With the exception of the fans in the bar and a few others, they were the only Americans I encountered that were willing to reveal their identities through clothing.

Plenty of media coverage has been devoted to how the games have drawn out fevered patriotism in the typically reserved Canadians. The entire city of Vancouver is practically covered in national flags right now. Maple leaves can be found on everything from mittens to doughnuts. One building downtown has a gigantic flag draped across its entire 10-story exterior.

Several local school districts in Vancouver declared a two-week holiday during the games and, ultimately, the city seemed like it was in the middle of a gigantic Fourth of July-style celebration while we were there. The downtown streets were jammed at all hours. The Bay department store had three hour long waits for Canadian apparel. People were standing in line for up to eight hours to take a ride on a zip line that crossed over several blocks and the heads of thousands gathered in a public square near the Hotel Vancouver. Dozens of pavilions and "house" drinking halls were scattered across town offering food, booze and free music to all. The spectacle had grown so large that city authorities had considered shutting down all the city's liquor stores on Saturday for 24 hours.

In short, it was an epic scene and one on a scale I haven't seen since, well, Burning Man last summer. One of my favorite moments from the trip: watching what appeared to be a very shy, very uptight wallflower couple begin madly swing dancing after The Great Lake Swimmers went on stage at the Ontario House. I wish I could be back up there for the closing ceremonies this weekend.

Click here for a Flickr gallery filled with more photos of international fans and Canadian uber-patriots, including Chewbacca.

Labels: politics, sports

Gather around children and I'll tell you about a period in American history when people actually considered Richard Nixon to be the most contemptuous president to ever inhabit the White House. I don't quite understand it myself. Could his mistakes compete with those of Warren G. Harding or James Buchanan? Say what you will about Watergate and Vietnam, at least Nixon's screw-ups didn't lead to the Civil War. Regardless, everyone still despised the guy. Now we're all living in the post-GW era where a single bungled war effort and spying on your political opponents seem like good ol' days worthy of a dozen Thomas Kincaid paintings.

While watching Frost/Nixon at Portland Center Stage I found myself wondering how many members of the mostly Boomer-aged audience still consider Nixon an irredeemable, sweat-spewing monster. The play's script offers plenty of context for the era and the man's misdeeds but it's ultimately more interested in presenting a portrait of his doomed efforts at a political comeback post-Watergate. Here Nixon is a fallen political warrior desperate to redeem himself and get back into the game. His hopes all rest on the shoulders of fading talk show host David Frost, who lured the ex-president into a series of televised interviews in 1977.

PCS' production doesn't quite capture the gravitas of Ron Howard's recent film adaptation but it does an excellent job of staging their battle of the wills. During breaks in the interviews, the cast darts to opposites sides of the stage to discuss strategy. The show opens with a backdrop of video monitors pounding out historical footage. During the interviews, they're used to pan in close on actor Bill Christ's Nixon as he finally crashes and burns. The pace is fast and the show breezes by in a mere hour and forty-five minutes.

Christ looks more like Tony Soprano than Richard Nixon but his portrayal nicely captures the ex-pres' crumbling spirit. The play's final scene is enough, but not quite enough, to make you feel sorry for Nixon. The dialog during this bit is great. "You have no idea how fortunate that makes you, liking people. Being liked. Having that facility. That lightness, that charm. I don't have it, I never did."

*sniff*

Poor, ol' Mr. Nixon. Maybe all he needed was a hug. Where's my time machine? I wanna go hug Nixon in 1977 and maybe give him some hot cocoa!

I saw Frost/Nixon on opening night and I never worked up the gumption to pull aside someone from the crowd to ask them if they still hate Tricky Dick or if their thoughts have cooled in light of the Bush administration's numerous fumbles. I can only assume that, had I done this, they would have said something along the lines of "a villain is still a villain, regardless of their misdeeds or their fictionalized late-night cheeseburger chats with British talk show hosts."

So he's still a crook.

Frost/Nixon continues through May 10th in Portland Center Stage's Gerding Theater

Labels: politics, theater

The current municipal controversy du jour in Portland is a proposal to drop a whole bunch of dough on another revamp of PGE Park to pave the way for an MLS franchise. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea...provided I don't have to think too much about where the money is going to come from. Jack Bogdanski has devoted a lot of space on his blog in recent weeks to decrying the cronyism and supposed backroom dealings that will fuel this already "done deal." Tomorrow morning, City Council will vote on whether or not to get the ball rolling on this one.

There's an argument to made on both sides but, let's be honest, are urban renewal funds ever going to go to a neighborhood that needs them? Will they go to repair Portland's roads or to patch the crumbling state of many of the city's public schools? Given City Hall's track record, of course not. Rather than a Convention Center hotel or a couplet on Burnside or another streetcar to a condo graveyard, I'd rather have a soccer stadium where I can pass a summer evening during the Great Depression Part Duex all tipsy on the delusion that I'm living in America's most European city.

Plus, having an MLS franchise in town will only further the chances of hooliganism. I'd pay good money to see a soccer riot in the downtown Nordstorms.

Labels: politics, sports

Once upon a time, I spent a year struggling to become a Professional Journalist TM. For various reasons, not necessarily limited to the fact that the only paying, non-internship gig I could find was in Barstow, California, I decided to stick with a career in an entirely different field. Take a look around here. Tossing in the towel was a shrewd move on my part, no? Plus, given the perpetually shrinking market for print journalists in recent years, I can't say I've spent too much time crying my eyes out over not making the cut. Journalism is a tough racket and it gets tougher every day.

I received plenty of rejection letters during my job hunt but my favorite, by far, was the one I got from Wm. Steven Humphrey, the editor of The Portland Mercury. If you've never seen a copy of his standard rejection letter/email, it's one of the best in the business. I don't know if he still sends this one out but I've received it two or three times over the years. My friend Autumn was also sent a copy during her foray into the world o' media. Here's what it looks like:

Hey _______,

Thanks a bunch for your application. Unfortunately, I'm looking for someone different at this time. Putting together a paper is a lot like finding pieces for Frankenstein's monster; and while you'd be a great right arm, right now I'm looking for the left. I'm sure someone of your talent will be discovered quickly.

Thanks again, and best of luck in the future!

Yer pal,

Steve

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wm. Steven Humphrey
Editor
Portland Mercury

It's very sweet, no?

Full disclosure: who landed the last position I applied for at the Mercury? Amy J. Ruiz herself. True story. So, off in some parallel universe, could I have found myself embroiled in a certain City Hall scandal? Naw. Over there I'm sure my doppelganger is currently enjoying a lucrative career as a globe-trotting crime fighter/sushi chef/brain surgeon/astronaut/Ferrari test driver.

Labels: journalism, politics

I'm skeptical but this photo did appear in the Oregonian today. Matt Davis says he'd like to have a version of it as an oil painting. I think it would look better as a mural on the side of City Hall.

Labels: ick, politics

Back in 2005 when I was an intern at Willamette Week, one of the editors called me into his office and asked me to contact a lobbyist from Alaska. He was in town trying to get any local journalist that would listen to him to write an article about his efforts to increase the state beer tax. Supposedly, this lobbyist had successfully convinced the state legislature in his home state to jack up their beer tax and now he was down in Oregon to do the same thing here. At the time he was up against Karen Minnis, the then Speaker of the House, who was, in his words, "completely in bed with the beer industry."

He claimed his motivations were primarily fueled by a desire to discourage kids from drinking and finding a revenue source for the prevention and rehabilitation of alcoholism in Oregon. I can't remember what third party was funding his efforts. After the would-be lobbyist caused a bizarre ruckus at the capitol building in Salem with another advocate, the editor nixed the story and I never heard another word about their proposal.

I didn't support the lobbyist's relatively modest proposal, which would have supposedly increased the average pint of beer in Oregon by eight cents and I certainly don't support the insanity that is HB 2461, a piece of legislation that would jack up the beer tax to $49.61 for every barrel (roughly $1.00 to $1.50 a pint at your local tavern). Several state blogs, the editorial pages of local newspapers and drinkers quaking in their boots over the possibility of $6.00 pints are all up in arms over the proposal.

I have no idea who's pulling the strings behind the five state lawmakers pushing for this latest increase but why are they doing it? Well, the state is running low on dough but statewide drug and alcohol addiction services are also hurting for revenue.

Nevertheless, the bill is a sin tax, pure and simple, and the links above can provide a much more informed denouncement of it than I can. So here instead are my proposals for some other things around here that could also use some taxes:

McMansions

Ironic mustaches

Greg Oden's knees

Sam Adam's libido

That Merritt Paulson guy

Also: the state business tax could probably still use some work. Didn't Intel pay a grand total of, maybe, $5.00 a few years ago?

Labels: beer, politics

In light of recent events maybe that post I wrote in defense of mayor Sam wasn't the best idea in the world.

Over the past few days, Adams has ostracized at least one member of City Council, new allegations have emerged, his spokesman has resigned and it's become obvious that his "mentoring" of Beau Breedlove may have led the poor kid down more than a few dark paths. This scandal isn't going to fade away and it's probably time for Adams to call it quits before months and months of recall efforts get underway.

What a mess.

Labels: politics

Everyone else in this city is stating an opinion so I might as well too.

I don't like Sam Adams.

I don't like his policies. I don't like his recklessness. I don't like the fact that he mercilessly panders to the city's green community. I don't like his seemingly endless passion for lame-brained civic projects and publicity stunts. I don't like that he's a cold, calculating career politician in a bike-commuting sheep's clothing. And I don't like the fact that he never returned one of my phone calls asking for a quote when I was working as an intern at a certain local weekly publication (not that I'm still bitter or anything).

Despite all of that, if Adams is finally telling the truth about his relationship with Beau Breedlove and that everything they did together was consensual and legal, then this city needs to let it go. Fine, so he lied about what could very well have been a perfectly legal personal affair between two adults. What would you have done in his shoes with a mayoral bid on the line? Tell the truth about your private life and watch the political career you fought and clawed to build out of nothing go up in flames?

Fat chance.

Bill Clinton lied while under oath and the nation gave him a pass. Not every public figure has been so lucky while caught up in similar circumstances. Should there be an investigation into whether or not Adams had sex with a minor? Absolutely. If those allegations can't be proven, well, then let me pop the happy collective marshmallow and gumdrop bubble we've all floating in while caught up in the wake of Obama-mania. Politicians lie every day about all sorts of things and, as we should all know, politics are a filthy, filthy business.

Taking a politician's word for anything is like convincing yourself that a stripper is really charmed by your personality and lame one-liners. Everyone in a position of power, be it the president or a manager of a Build-A-Bear Workshop, has had to fib, toss some skeletons in a closet and step on a few very nice people to get there. Does that make it all OK?

Of course not but this whole bloody country was built on lies, huge ones and little white ones and ones the size of Beau Breedlove too. I don't like it either but that's just the way things are.

So Adams was stupid enough to let his guard (and his pants, let us not forget the pants) down long enough to become smitten with a poor guy whose parents were spiteful or oblivious enough to name him Beau Breedlove. Even worse, he got caught lying about it. If Adams couldn't see a Grand Canyon-sized political liability like Beau coming from a thousand miles away then maybe he isn't so shrewd after all.

Still, attack our mayor for his political views. Hound him for his ridiculous bridge toll proposal and the horrible Burnside couplet plan that he keeps pushing. If it can't be proven that he had sex with a minor then this city needs to stop the cries for his resignation and let Sam go back to doing what he does best: giving Portland much more legitimate reasons to regret electing him mayor.

And don't blame me, I voted for Sho.

---------------------------------

FYI: The photo above was copied from a Flickr pool. It belongs to a Flickr user named "dontbecreepy," whose great photostream full of shots of Sam Adams caught in several awkward poses can be found here.

Labels: politics

Here's a few blurry cell phone photos from last night's Inauguration party at the Slammer, the former cop bar turned hipster haven on SE 8th. I was told there would be people dancing on the roof but maybe that all came together after I left.

Yesterday was a great day for national politics but not so great a day for local ones, obviously. I'm not going to state an opinion here but I overheard this joke at the Horse Brass Pub last night:

How do you spell "Blagojevich" in Portland?

S-a-m A-d-a-m-s

(rimshot)

Labels: politics

Within hours (minutes?) of this going to press someone registered this domain.

Update: And now there's a blog.

Labels: politics

I thought about writing-up a lengthy blog post about the twilight of the Bush administration chock full of Hunter S. Thompson-inspired venom or at least some imitative Matt Taibbi-esque vitriol. Then I realized that this clip from The Princess Bride sums up my thoughts and feelings rather nicely.

May George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and all the rest be blessed with longevity. May they live for decades and even centuries to come like that creaky, ancient knight at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I hope they all survive long enough to fully realize every last one of their mistakes and that history will neither redeem their actions, nor justify their means. Or, to paraphrase Westley, "It means [they're left] in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever. "

The Bush administration
2001 - 2009
May your idiocy and arrogance serve as a cautionary tale for epochs to come

Looking ahead, good luck, America. You're gonna need it.

Labels: politics

I'd be exaggerating if I said that this gallery along NW 21st is devoted exclusively to portraits of Obama. In fact, only half of its retail floor is filled with them.

Labels: cell phone photos, obama, politics