^{Alden Mason’s The Farmer’s Wife (1997), acrylic on canvas, 60 by 50 inches}

At Foster/White Gallery.

UPDATED!

What’s opening this week? Besides Asia Argento’s thighs, that is. Aren’t I nice? I put the naughty picture in the popup for you fine folks at work. Here’s the tame alternative:

In On Screen this week: Brendan Kiley on Olivier Assayas’s Boarding Gate (“The film lurches between low-level action sequences and bleak eroticism, all for the sake of admiring, and pitying, Argento’s sad beauty”), me on Flawless (“Giving the thieves social grievances serves only to undermine their greed—the one motive we can all understand”), Bradley Steinbacher on Run Fatboy Run (“With pedestrian direction by David Schwimmer [yes, that David Schwimmer], Run Fatboy Run works best when all focus is on Simon Pegg, whose inspired twitchings and dashes of exasperated mania are responsible for the bulk of the movie’s highs”), Charles Mudede on Stop-Loss (It’s “an obituary of America’s leftist spirit”), and Steinbacher again on 21 (“a headache of a movie where every camera movement is overbaked and every turn of a card is accompanied by an unnecessary sound edit”).

And Lindy West on the mysteriously enduring appeal of High School Musical.

Limited-run films tucked away in the calendar include the remaining National Film Festival for Talented Youth events at SIFF Cinema, the nicely shot soap operetta Lost in Beijing and the annual anniversary screenings of Rubin & Ed at the Grand Illusion, the deeply fascinating Opera Jawa and other Global Lens films at SIFF Cinema, and Live and Become at the Varsity.

For all your movie times needs, check out the redesigned calendar. I think it’s even more helpful than before, but we’re still tweaking things, so feed the back and back the feed.

I was there. I saw it all, man. Shit like that can change you. Change you forever.

They gathered. They acted all casual. Like nothing was going to happen. They carried backpacks and bags and oddly bulging bellies. Then, at precisely 3:15 PM, Saturday afternoon, CHAOS! FEATHERS! CLEVER PILLOW CASES! “VIOLENCE”! FUSS!

Fabulous.

And this is what it looked like…

Before the event…

And of course (for your protection)…

Sneaky, sneaky pillow warriors…

Then, a whistle blew, and suddenly…PILLOW FIGHT!!!

Feathers…feathers…oh, Jesus! The feathers!

And then, WHAM! It was all completely over…

…just like that.

The End.

UPDATE!

Some serious video journalism…

My favorite part is the absoutely frickin’ traumatized old Asian women in the lower left hand corner, minute 1:29-1:25…”Da pirrows! DA PIRROWS!”

(Thanks be to lovely Ruby Aquino for the pictures & video, and to lovely Natalie L’erin and lovely friends, for modeling for us.)

The Sunset Bowl in Ballard is closing on April 13. On April 22 everything on the premises—from the vending machines to the bowling pins—is going to be auctioned off. More details at MyBallard.

At least one industrial-strength ball polisher is going to be auctioned off. So if, um, you’ve got industrial-strength balls and they’re in need of regular polishing, you’re not going to want to miss this auction.

More strife in Iraq. U.S. financial system in crisis. Rice prices soar.

None of these headlines will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in a court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole that will spell the end of the Earth - and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely - though they have done some checking just to make sure.

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act.

We in the future that has been here since the end of the space age have so much to worry about.

Reading

Tod Wodicka at Elliott Bay Book Company

• See what else is happening in Books on Saturday »

Party

Magma Festival’s Volcano Explosion at Ballard Warehouse

• See what else is happening in Music on Saturday »

A children’s book author, an open mic, and two readings today, including a pretty exciting one, by a debut author.

At the Douglass-Truth Branch of the Seattle Public Library, two poets are reading. Lynne Thompson reads from her most recent collection of poems, Beg No Pardon. Carletta Carrington Wilson is working on a book-length poem, and I believe she’ll be taking it out for a test-drive today, which should be interesting.

And at the Elliott Bay Book Company, Todd Wodicka reads from his debut novel, All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well. The title comes from a quote by Julian of Norwich, who was roundly chastised hundreds of years ago because she believed that God was loving. The novel is about a medieval reenactor with a gigantic, deformed nose who’s trying to reconnect with his son, and it’s full of those little bursts of beautiful writing that are simply stunning, the kind of stuff that most authors can’t maintain for hundreds of pages. Wodicka maintains the ingenuity all the way through the book. We’ll be seeing a lot more from him, I’m sure, so this is a good opportunity to catch him on the way up.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, here.

When Slate rolled out the Hillary Deathwatch this morning—a daily feature tracking Clinton’s fortunes and assigning a percentage to her chances of gaining the nomination—they put Hillary’s chances at 12%. Well, Hillary had a rough day: Slate has dropped Hillary’s chances down to 10.3%. Says Slate….

Friday was not kind to Hillary Clinton. Based on Deathwatch’s top-secret morbidity formula, Hillary tanked on four metrics today, reducing her chances of winning the nomination by 1.7 points to 10.3 percent. The nastiest news for Clinton is in the polls. She has drifted eight points behind Obama in a national Gallup survey—the first time that she has trailed Obama by a statistically significant margin since the Rev. Wright imbroglio.

Here’s that Gallup daily tracking poll…

Hm. Looks bad.

There was also the Casey endorsement today, Leahy’s call for Hillary to drop out, and Howard Dean’s call for the nominee to be selected by July 1—which would require, of course, the superdelegates to make up their damn minds well before the convention.

But… um… after taking a late-afternoon look at the Hillary Deathwatch… it occurs to me that if Barack Obama were behind in delegates, states won, and the popular vote, Slate probably wouldn’t use the term deathwatch, would they? And using terms like morbidity?

I understand it snowed in Seattle today. I’m in Los Angeles where it’s 70 degrees. I walked past The Ivy a few mintes ago where I saw no one famous dining on its famed patio. Earlier in the day I stood outside the Price Is Right’s bungalow and marveled at that program’s longevity. Entertaining America for 36 years—we should all be so lucky.

I’m here to do Real Time with Bill Maher tonight at 11 PM. (Real Time’s bungalow is next door.) Feel free to watch the show tonight and critique my clothing here.

Two weeks ago, 20/20 did a story on local artist Ariana Page Russell. Russell has a skin condition called Dermatographia. She uses her own skin in her art, but not in a yicky Goth kind of way. The reporter for the segment asks the most annoying questions in the universe, but it’s an interesting subject. Ariana (who once posed for a salacious Party Crasher photo for me, years ago) is terrific, as is her work.

(Thanks to Slog tipper Maggie.)

The Wine Outlet celebrates its third anniversary with a pig roast on Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

There will be three pigs this year, one at the SoDo store and two at the larger Interbay store. There will also be cheeses, breads, and of course, cake. There will also be lots of specially priced wines for the event.

The owner, Richard, is the wine columnist for the P-I. I’ve never been to the Wine Outlet, but this all sounds pretty great.

Rock n’ Roller Rikki Rockett (Real Name Richard Ream) Arrested for Rape

Rocker Rockett (entering Roxy): Rapist?

Last week, as was widely reported, a consultant hired by the King County Council released a report on the deplorable conditions at King County’s two animal shelters. The findings were pretty shocking: kennels covered in urine and feces; sick animals kept in a room with no cooling, heating, ventilation, or running water; sick cats that were “not provided the rudiments of food or water for over 24 hours and possibly longer”; bowls of food and water that stayed empty for days; filthy litter boxes; fabricated records; piles of dog waste all over the dogs’ exercise yard; dogs “languishing in [their] own waste”; and more. The report specifically calls out King County Executive Ron Sims for failing to make the shelter service “a priority. The Executive has not asked for any significant new funding for [the shelter program] for the past several years, has not spent the funds that it has (more than $500,000 now sits in a [shelter] donation fund that has not been used to improve operations as intended) and… has made a calculated decision that the current physical facility at Kent is not worth fixing.”

Pretty damning stuff. If you were the county executive, you might do damage control, right? Vow to spend that money improving the shelter and minimizing the number of animals that die due to unsafe or unsanitary conditions? Not Sims. Instead, he’s gone into offensive denial mode—attacking the county council, making paranoid statements about the consultant’s alleged bias, and using county staff to do a competing report (the results of which Sims has not released).

From the P-I:

“That did not happen,” Sims said. “No animals were without water, and animals were not without the food they needed.”

Spotting empty dishes in a cage does not mean they are never filled, Sims said. As another example, he said, “If you find feces on the floor, you can’t say that’s a constant issue.”

And:

Sims’ staff also has sought to paint [consultant Nathan] Winograd, a California consultant and a national leader in the anti-euthanasia movement, as a single-issue zealot.

From the Times:

Like her boss two days earlier, Sims spokeswoman Carolyn Duncan blasted Winograd, who is a nationally prominent advocate of “no-kill” shelters. “He isn’t a neutral consultant taking an objective look at our animal-control facilities,” Duncan said. “He has a playbook that’s on his Web site. We’re in Steps 3 and 4 where you escalate it. It’s a revolution where there are good guys and bad guys.”

And:

“I don’t agree we’ve allowed animals to starve or be without water,” Sims said in response to Nathan Winograd’s report Monday to the Metropolitan King County Council.

Sims said he is committed to improving procedures at the shelters and replacing the primary 32-year-old shelter building in Kent. He rejected the consultant’s claim that the executive branch has failed to respond to 10 years of complaints by volunteers and employees about conditions. Sims said he never heard those complaints.

“He’s not going to say that we were in denial or we’ve ignored it,” Sims said. “He hasn’t talked to me, he’s never met me, he doesn’t know what my feelings are.”

And here he is on KUOW this Wednesday morning:

This consultant never talked to me. It’s interesting—the consultant has a website, and he has a playbook, and he’s following his playbook … really religiously …

We have videos too; we have photos too; and we have logs detailing it. The same way a trial lawyer would look at accusations, we’ve gone through and said here’s what we found and here’s what we know.

We know this party, we know this consultant and this is not the first time he’s done it. And we’re saying fine, if [they’re going to] portray a facility and how we operate it inaccurately, then we’re going to challenge that.

What he said he saw and the photographs that are taken leaves much to dispute. He has made accusations that are completely unfounded. …

We’ve seen the playbook. He’s following his playbook. He does this everywhere. …

The person wrote a book and said basically we should never euthanize an animal …
We’re not going to arrive at what the consultant wishes to have, which is no kill.

Hmm, paranoid much, Ron? That nefarious-sounding “playbook” he and his staff are referring to is a list of suggestions on Winograd’s web site for people who want their local animal shelters to adopt a no-kill policy. Moreover, the county does strive for “no-kill.” That doesn’t literally mean that no animals are euthanized—rather, it means that no healthy, adoptable animals should be. Interestingly, the definition onf “adoptable” generally excludes pit bulls—a breed that makes up the vast majority of the dogs at the shelter.

Sims has been a bit of a loose cannon lately—railing against light rail, endorsing Republican Port of Seattle commissioner Bob Edwards (who was defeated by Gael Tarlton), advocating that the county sell off Boeing Field to the Port in exchange for a rail corridor with lower value—so it’s not exactly surprising to hear him making statements that are a little off the wall. But defending conditions that, at the very least, may be unsafe for animals by sticking your head in the sand and pointing fingers at the consultant—well, that’s just cuckoo. Not to mention bad politics.

(King County council member Dow Constantine is hosting a town hall meeting on the shelter issue in Burien April 14).

Teachers’ unions across the state—fed up with the WASL, growing class sizes and funding problems—may be moving towards issuing votes of no confidence in Terry Bergeson, Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Over the next two months, teachers unions in Seattle, Edmonds, Bremerton, Issaquah, Bellevue, Lake Stevens, and Shoreline—among others—will vote on Bergeson, who has held the superintendent position for the last 12 years.

According to Seattle Education Association President Wendy Kimball, the union has repeatedly pushed to reshape the WASL and hiring problems, which Bergeson—one of the architects of the dreaded WASL—has ignored. “{T]he vast majority of [teachers] have very negative positions about the WASL,” Kimball says. “Teachers recognize the need to be accountable [but] this particular test has implications attached to it. It’s high stakes.”

Kimball says SEA—the biggest union in the state—could vote on a motion in May.

Bergeson was unavailable for comment.

Via Americablog.

Throwing a sweet party this weekend? Get it in the paper! Email the specifics to partycrasher@thestranger.com and give your party the attention it deserves.

Around 10:30 pm last night, the cops showed up to Chop Suey and told Club Pop, a bi-weekly 18+ electronic and rock music dance night, that they were being too loud. They turned it down a bit, but it creeped back up, and at around 12:30, 15 minutes into the set of their headliner Tim Sweeney, the cops showed up again and demanded that they turn it down. When they complied, many patrons left.

Read more on Line Out.

“Man Shooting Hole Through Wall Kills Wife.”

Charged and Seized: As you may recall, a police officer in Lima, Ohio shot and killed Tarika Wilson in January while she was holding her baby during a drug raid. The cop has been charged. Also in Lima, police have confiscated a couple’s life savings of $400,000—for possessing a small amount of marijuana. The couple had called the cops after fending off two burglars from their home.

Nixed: No plea agreement for Canadian seed trafficker.

Pardoned: Bush releases non-violent drug offender.

Halfway There: New Hampshire pot decriminalization bill stalls in state senate.

Gov. Patterson: Used pot and cocaine.

Guilty: Oakland pot candy maker pleads.

Not Guilty: Texas jury dismisses marijuana charges.

Jurors deliberated less than 15 minutes Tuesday before reaching a not guilty verdict for Tim Stevens, 53, whose attorney used the defense that marijuana use was a necessity to treat nausea and vomiting. County attorney Scott Brumley called the verdict “unfortunate.”

Stevens, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1986, suffers from nausea and cyclical vomiting syndrome, a condition so severe that it has required hospitalization and blood transfusions in the past.

Rick Steves: Smart on drugs.

Superskunk Me: 30 days on reefer.

More Stable than the US: That drug haven called the Netherlands.

Supreme Court: To consider search and consent.

In Sports News:

A 24-year-old South Kitsap man — and self-proclaimed Seattle Seahawks fan — was arrested Sunday for allegedly spitting on the hamburger he prepared for a man wearing Pittsburgh Steelers attire, according to Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office reports.

He was booked into the Kitsap County jail for fourth-degree assault and possession of marijuana and released.

I must admit, I’m pretty psyched about this.

The Manson Girls were h.o.t.

From the Internet:

DATE: Saturday March 29th RAIN OR SHINE. Don’t be a wimp ;-) TIME: 3:15pm PLACE: Pike Place Market, corner of Pike and Pine. In the street, in front of the place that throws the fish.

A car will be blocking traffic so that we can safely fight in the street. Because we’ll be stopping traffic the fight will be pretty short. (I’ve choreographed this so no one will get stuck behind the fight. Don’t worry.)

THE WAY IT WORKS-

- TELL EVERYONE ABOUT THE FIGHT. Bring as many people as you possibly can. A big fight is a GREAT fight!
- CONCEAL YOUR PILLOW! Hide it in a backpack, a shopping bag, under your coat, etc. DO NOT go to the fight location and hang out with a pillow in your hand. Look busy: Pretend to shop, chat on the phone or with a friend, whatever, just don’t be obvious. (If you see someone hanging out, with pillow in hand, discreetly suggest that they look busy and try to hide the pillow)
- LISTEN FOR THE WHISTLE. I’ll have to create a diversion in the street to allow the car to stop for us and give the cars that were in front of it time to move down the street to give us enough room to have the fight. Don’t just start fighting because you see me in the street.
- After 3 minutes, I’ll blow the whistle again to stop the fight. STOP FIGHTING IMMEDIATELY AND WALK AWAY. Just like nothing ever happened ;-)

**AFTERMATH GATHERING at The Whiskey Bar (just in time for happy hour!) 2000 Second Ave. Bring cash if you want to drink, because they don’t accept credit cards.

REMEMBER-
Bring Friends, Tell people
Conceal Your Pillow
Don’t Hit Anyone Without a Pillow (Very important!!! )
Watch Out for Cameras

—If you come with a group, it’s helpful to spread out before the fight and come running from different directions—

Many of you in the comments suggested that you wish you could tell off the pillow-fighters after the last time, when a cleanup was necessary due to all the feathers. Now’s your chance.

So, I don’t get it. Was Bush trying to reclaim President Warren G. Harding’s infamous dunce cap oratory as a slap at us cosmopolitan anti-war elitists when he hauled out the “normalcy” is returning to Iraq quote yesterday.

And when exactly were things normal in Iraq in George Bush’s world view?

When the U.S. had to enforce a no-fly zone and sanctions in the 90s?

When Saddam was stalking us with WMDs? [sic]

When Saddam was working with Al Qaeda? [sic]

When Jay Garner was in control? [sic]

When Halliburton was getting sweetheart deals?

When there was no electricity?

When Paul Bremer was in control? [sic]

When U.S. contractors were burned and hung in Fallujah?

When Ahmed Chalabi was our main ally?

In Abu Ghraib?

When Zarqawi and al Qaeda in Iraq were running suicide bombings in places like Qahtaniya?

When U.S. military freelnacer Blackwater was shooting up civilians?

When the U.S. military killed civilians in Haditha?

When Turkey attacked the Kurds in northern Iraq?

Or is it today’s total blow-up which comes one day after Bush’s pronouncement?

Footnote 1: It’s fitting for Bush to hook up with Harding. From his DOJ scandals to his oil industry giveaways (Teapot Dome), Harding’s string of doofus scandals have unfortunate similarities to Bush’s reign of error.

Footnote 2: After Harding delivered his “normalcy” speech in 1920, critics agreed on a definition: A return to a time that never was.

From LookatLao

The King County Prosecutor’s Office has dropped charges against Matthew Oly and Bryan Krieger, who were accused of harassing and threatening Marcus Wilson—the former manager of the Pony nightclub—on Capitol Hill last September.

According to King County Deputy Prosecutor Mike Hogan, Krieger’s attorney presented prosecutors with another potential suspect. Wilson was unable to positively identify whether or not the third suspect was involved in the incident, and prosecutors decided they’d have trouble making their case. Additionally, Krieger passed a polygraph test about his involvement in the gay-bashing.

According to Hogan, the prosecutors have apologized to Oly and Krieger. “[The] fear as a prosecutor, of falsely charging somebody, is always in the back of your mind,” he says. “We told [Oly and Krieger] that if that’s what happened, we apologize. We’re not interested in convicting people that didn’t do it.” Hogan also says he dropped a related drug charge against Oly because “[the case] was never about drugs.”

A pastor whose disappearance from a small town in upstate New York triggered a search by police and the FBI was found earlier today inside an Ohio strip club. Police said that when the Rev. Craig S. Rhodenizer, 46, was confronted by an officer, he began crying and said he couldn’t remember anything about the 36 hours he was missing.

But dancers at the club remembered Rhodenizer. They told investigators that Rhodenizer spent two hours drinking, soliciting dances and making threatening comments. He also said he wanted to take the dancers back to his motel, according to the police report. In his car was a bottle of Bacardi rum.

Boom Noodle sounds tempting, but I’m always a little disappointed when I eat the food and a little mad when I get the check.

I wish we had a Samurai Ramen up here.

I guess I could go to Ballet again. But I don’t know if I can face another goddamned chicken curry. Maybe I should dine and dash, just so I get 86’d and never have to argue with myself about whether to eat lunch there ever again.

[Eats a stale almond from desk drawer. Fade to black.]

A 70-year-old woman’s dog was killed by a pitbull in Inver Grove Heights. Margaret Johnston was walking her miniature Schnauzer along with her 2-year-old grandson when the white pit bull mix came up from behind them and attacked her dog.

The Schnauzer was killed in the attack and once the pit bull was separated from the Schnauzer, it went after Johnston. Johnston got bitten and her and the pit bull rolled down a hill. Johnston was able to punch the dog several times and the dog ran away.

Here’s a news story about a group trying to get Alison Bechdel’s comic book memoir Fun Home banned from their school:

The issue is with Fun Home, a book assigned for reading in a mid-level English class at the University of Utah. The class introduces students to different literary genres. In the case of Fun Home, it’s told in the style of a comic book. The story centers around the author as she comes to terms with her own and her father’s homosexuality.

Drawings depicting sex acts are included in the 230 page novel. A student in the class was offended and approached the group “No More Pornography,” which made headlines earlier this year when it staged a successful protest of music videos shown a gym in Provo. The group has started an online petition in protest of the book.

Here is No More Pornography’s home page, with links to a petition with 111 signatures, demanding that the University pulls Fun Home.

Now, I’ve read Fun Home. I liked Fun Home a lot. And there is no way that anybody without an Alison Bechdel fetish would be able to masturbate successfully to Fun Home. The sexual content is mostly on the subject of repression and self-loathing. If you look at the news story’s comments, it becomes pretty clear that the real issue isn’t with the sex, but the fact that the book portrays homosexuals as humans. Some comments:

Beware of the pornification and homosexualization of our culture!

and

You are a pathetic excuse for a complex organism. If “growing up” is accepting immoral behavior and same-sex attraction and the like, then you and I are living in different worlds and it’s time for you to wake up, grab the next bus out, [of Utah] and never turn back.

Let me tell you what my version of “growing up” is. It is facing the statistics and facts that homo’s, lesbi’s, and “sexually diverse” people cannot help perpetuate the cycle of human life. In fact, that way of life is contrary to what is “natural” and, since you are so religious, contrary to what God intended. Nuts and bolts my friend; male and female. NOT bolts and bolts or nuts and nuts. Very unproductive, unnatural, and useless. You don’t have to be LDS to figure that one out genius.

Second, do I want my children to be as open-minded as you? Do I want my children growing up thinking pornography is ok, and valueing virtue and staying moral is a thing of the past and unacceptable? Do I want my children to grow up becoming rapists or child molestors or hermits watching playboy because they can’t get enough? Not in a million years. Look at the studies; look at the numbers. You are living in a dream-world and are deceiving yourself.

The Mormons prove to be just as classy as I’ve always known them to be.

It’s snowing.

First rule of Cougar Camp is you DO NOT talk about Cougar Camp…

From YouTube csudduth

I read this young adult bookblog more because I like the writer and she’s from my home state of Maine than because I’m interested in young adult books. But today she has a brief review of the upcoming relaunch of the Sweet Valley High series that piqued my interest. Important bit:

the Wakefield twins are no longer “a perfect size six”, now they’re (get ready…) “a perfect size four”

Plasma: Matter’s favorite form since the big bang.

Please don’t do this unless you are prepared for death, injury or massive financial loss.

The PI reports…

Starbucks won’t pay back barista tips

Thousands of Starbucks employees got a personal message from their upset boss, who said the company was being “grossly mischaracterized” in the media over a recent tip pool controversy that could cost the company more than $100 million.

This was left on my voicemail, re: my cop feature

This is how we reduce the police murder rate in Seattle. You know, where the cops kill people? Yeah. We reduce the numbers of the police down to the point where al they could focus on were major crime and leave the homeless alone. Now what else we’ve got in Seattle that’s now de-funded under the Nazis—you know Bush is a Nazi? I don’t know if you white boys with the glasses know that or not, worshiping Bill Gates, but anyways—we got a harm reduction system in the public health system that is right now de-funded. Look up street outreach services and remember this: as soon as we had the damn thing going, they took all the resources into the prison system and left the homeless out there swinging in the breeze again so that you could sit there and, you know, flay their corpses a little bit. See you now, motherfucker.

“See you now, motherfucker,” is my new email signature.

The now-infamous Oklahoma state rep Sally Kern spoke at a meeting of the University of Central Oklahoma’s College Republicans last night. Despite the College Republicans best efforts to keep homos and protesters out of their little hatefest (“This event is open to College Republicans and those with a conservative ideology only. Protesters will not be tolerated.”), homos and protesters showed up anyway—including gay blogger and Oklahoma City resident Michael Heaton.

She did not mention the “homosexual agenda” or even say the word “gay” during her speech, and instead focused on how, in her words, our system of government is founded on Christianity and a biblical world view, thus we need leaders and laws that reflect this reality. It was an oblique way of arriving at her previous conclusions, though in a far less incendiary manner….

The best stuff was during the Q&A when she called those who did not believe in Christianity “infidels,” and [said] that Islam is a real danger to America because Christianity is the only path to salvation, and that if we doubted the “Homosexual lifestyle” was bad for people’s health, all we had to do was look at the CDC website. Likewise, If we doubted that gays are indoctrinating kids in school, just Google search “homosexual agenda” and behold the proof that pops up. Additionally, she really did seem to lay it on Islam rather hard tonight, even though she couldn’t even pronounce the word “Sharia.” I had to help her out with that one from the audience.

It seems to me that Kern’s comments from the start have been just as anti-Islam as they have been anti-gay. But besides one small mention on CAIR’s website, I can’t find much push back from the America’s Muslim community. Where, as they say, is the outrage?

Conflict of Interest

‘Answered Prayers and Other Tragedies’ at Richard Hugo House

• See what else is happening in Books on Friday »
• More Stranger Suggests for this week »

You’d think more of the current round of articles about the violence in Basra would pause to mention that the British largely withdrew from the city in August and have so far refused to reassert themselves.

It’s never so easy as “troops out now,” eh?

Who said what about the shit going down in Iraq? (It’s sad how easy this will be.)

a) “Normalcy is returning back to Iraq.”

b) “Knowing that exports will continue as normal would bring some relief to people’s minds. We might see further downside when the U.S. is trading later today.”

c) “[I want] everyone to pursue political solutions and peaceful protests and a stop to the shedding of Iraqi blood.”

Click on the names to find the quotes.

1. Muqtada al-Sadr.

2. George W. “Positive Moment” Bush.

3. Veronica Smart, British energy analyst.

A deeper look into Guede’s recent claim about Amanda Knox being at home at the time of the murder makes him more guilty of the crime than Knox. For one, it’s the most foolish statement he could have made. It contains no sense, and it sounds as if he is purely making up things. Now, if Amanda had actually been in the room when Meredith was murdered, why does Guede need to make shit up? If he wants to incriminate Amanda, why not say exactly what happened that night? If she was there, this would be an easy thing to do. But instead Guede is saying fantastic things like: “I heard Amanda at the doorway.” Such a claim is made from the stuff of air.

That said, Amanda’s family has hired the worst publicity agent, David Marriott, to improve Amanda’s public image. He writes rough letters to the press, calls everyone who is not on Amanda’s side wrong or stupid or unprofessional. (Does he communicate with European journalists in this way? If so, I feel sorry for Amanda’s parents. They have no idea of the kind of damage he is doing overseas.)

David Marriott, it’s not a matter of bullying reporters to take your side on an issue that is as convoluted Meredith’s murder; it’s a matter of being there when the press needs real information, and keeping Amanda’s family in a friendly light. At present, you sound desperate and like an ugly American.

Checkout this terrible press release:

Information being attributed to Rudy Guede regarding the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher is impossible to believe. There is no evidence to support his suggestion that Amanda and Raffaele Sollecito were present when Meredith was murdered. Guede lacks credibility just as his current statement lacks credibility.

We find it quite interesting that this information comes forward just a few days before a Supreme Court hearing in Rome to determine whether or not Amanda should continue to be held in the Le Capanne jail in Perugia.

Guede said before that he did not see Amanda and Rafaelle that night, and is now telling a different story.

We know that Amanda is innocent. There is no evidence against her, and we await her release.

What’s wrong with this letter? For one, Amanda changed her story several times, too. Which changes are we now supposed to believe? Why should we believe Amanda’s changes instead of Guede’s? Because the statement is written as if Amanda did not change her story, it has about it a ring of arrogance: it accuses another person of doing precisely what has been done by the accuser. (This kind of arrogance characterizes American foreign policy.) More sensitivity to the past (and more sensitivity in general) would help rather than harm Amanda’s case.

Three readings going on around town tonight, including a whopping conflict of interest.

First, downstairs at Town Hall, there’s Eric Alterman, with his book Why We’re Liberals. In general, I find Alterman to be insufferably pandering, but Christ on a pogo stick, look at this book cover! Erica Barnett pointed it out to me last week: Alterman standing in the middle of a swarm of people including Martin Luther King Jr, JFK and RFK, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ (sans pogo stick,) and a surprisingly vertical and strong-looking FDR (I guess there’s no Polio in Liberal Heaven.) I’m totally judging this book by its cover, I know, but did anyone at the publisher suggest that maybe this was a bad idea?

Up at Open Books, Sebastian Matthews is reading from his new and lovely book of poems, titled We Generous. One poem from the book begins with the line: “Bears have been following me around again.” If you’re strapped for cash, this one is free and looks like a good time.

Finally comes the complete and utter conflict of interest: At the larger upstairs room in Town Hall, the Hugo House is presenting “Answered Prayers and Other Tragedies,” in which three authors read new work. The authors are Stranger employee and Last Days columnist David Schmader, who is even funnier in real life than he is on paper, which is really saying something; current Stranger Sonics Death Watch columnist Sherman Alexie, who is one of the best readers of his own work that I’ve ever seen; and Stranger contributor Michelle Tea, who is a good and adventurous writer and also a very good performer. All three will be performing original work based around the theme, which is “Answered Prayers and Other Tragedies.” There will also be original music by Stranger writer Sean Nelson, but I’ll leave that conflict of interest to the music folks over at Line Out.

Full readings calendar, including the next week or so, is here.

Remember the man whose girlfriend sat on the toilet of their mobile home so long her skin grafted to the seat and required surgical removal? The man charged last week with misdemeanor mistreatment of a dependent adult for allowing his girlfriend to sit on the toilet of their mobile home so long her skin grafted to the seat and required surgical removal?

He’s been arrested again—this time for allegedly exposing his junk to a neighbor’s teenage daughter and her friends.

^{Rashid Johnson’s The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club (Thurgood) (2008), lambda print, 69 by 55.5 inches}

At Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York, where Carrie E.A. Scott, director of James Harris Gallery in Seattle for the last two years, will become director soon, therefore leaving Seattle. Congratulations, Ms. E Period, A Period. For the rest of us, regrets all around.

Sen. Bob Casey beat Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum by nearly 20 points in Pennsylvania—and today Casey endorsed Barack Obama.

From the New York Times…

The anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders on Thursday released on the Internet his highly charged and much-anticipated anti-Koran film, which matches graphic images of terrorist attacks and death threats against Jews by Muslim extremists with verses of the Muslim holy book.

The English-language version of Fitna here.

In the future, robots will be crawling up your ass. Seriously.

As if the idea of colonoscopies didn’t sound uncomfortable enough, now researchers are developing self-propelling probes that crawl inside the colon and grip its sides with the aid of sticky films.

Still, these slithery devices could lead to better, safer, more comfortable colonoscopies to help uncover cancerous polyps.

We’ve got a three-fer, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Marquette Manor Baptist Church in Illinois:

A former Downers Grove church youth minister was sentenced to 4 years in prison Thursday for sexually assaulting an underage female student. Edward E. Greene, 38, of Asheboro, N.C., pleaded guilty Thursday in DuPage County Circuit Court to criminal sexual assault while in a position of trust with the girl, who was 13 to 17 years old when she attended Marquette Manor Baptist Church and its school in Downers Grove….

Similar charges are still pending against John Puga, 36, of Aurora, a former youth basketball coach at the school charged with sexually assaulting an underage female church member…. A third man, Frank Stima, 64, a former church deacon who now lives in Washington state, pleaded guilty in 2006 to criminal sexual abuse of an underage female and was sentenced to 2 years’ probation.

So at one church—Marquette Manor Baptist in Downers Grove—three different men were sexually assaulting underage girls. One church. And unlike a restaurant that accidentally poisoned a handful of diners, Marquette Manor Baptist is still open for business. According to the church’s website, members of Marquette Manor Baptist seek “to exalt the name of Jesus Christ in everything we do”—really? everything? even child rape?—and visitors are encouraged to “get a feel for what goes on at Marquette.” Thanks but no thanks, Marquette.

My column this week:

Hillary Clinton may be on track to win the Pennsylvania primary on April 22, but along the way to that contest she is losing something essential: the willingness of Democrats, political journalists, and opinion leaders to continue suspending their disbelief about the possibilities of her campaign.

More and more people are saying the obvious: It takes a kind of departure from reality usually reserved for movie theaters in order to imagine that this adventure really ends with Clinton winning the Democratic nomination.

She is behind in fundraising. She is behind in the popular vote. She is behind in the delegate count. She would need an extraordinarily large—and therefore extraordinarily unlikely—margin of victory in Pennsylvania in order to make any significant progress in closing any of those gaps.

The math is simply not on her side, and winning the Democratic nomination is not about a series of those now-familiar “Clinton comeback” moments interspersed with repeated stretches of Clinton defeat. It is, in the end, about math: adding up enough delegates to win.

Which Obama is in the process of doing. Not Clinton.

Comments from a local precinct delegate who is switching (in despair and disgust) from Clinton to Obama, plus some push-back from a local Clinton fan and some news from Sen. Maria Cantwell, when the column continues.

Rudy Giuliani is contemplating a run for governor of New York. I’m thinking he may be overqualified—but only on the adultery front.

…Condoleezza Rice for getting Barack Obama’s back?

Condoleezza Rice today entered the race debate that has been a simmering undercurrent of the presidential campaign when she said it had been “important” for Barack Obama to give his landmark speech on race and defended the patriotism of African Americans.

The US secretary of state also decried the “birth defect” of slavery that she said has left Americans struggling to confront racism. “Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together - Europeans by choice and Africans in chains,” Rice told the Washington Times. “That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding.”

…

She declined to comment directly on the presidential campaign in the Times interview, but strongly defended the patriotism of African Americans. Video clips of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, shouting, “God damn America,” ignited the race row that has been dominating the Democratic presidential race. Conservatives have also accused Obama and his wife, Michelle, of displaying insufficient love for the country.

“What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn’t love and have faith in them - and that’s our legacy,” Rice said.

And I hadn’t heard this…

Rice’s success drew heated criticism in 2003 from Reverend Wright, who dubbed her “Condoskeeza” in a sermon.

“For every one Colin Powell, a millionaire, you’ve got 10m blacks who cannot read,” Wright said at the time. “For every one Condoskeeza Rice, you’ve got 1m in prison.”

Well, I guess you could call this progress:

The Drug Enforcement Administration is losing more guns but fewer laptops than it was about five years ago, the Justice Department’s inspector general said Friday.

Iraq: Stepping in to aid Iraqi forces, U.S. bombs Basra in attempt to take city from Shiite forces.

Pennsylvania: Sen. Casey endorses Obama in run up to April 22 primary.

The Economy: Despite all the other lousy economic indicators, inflation ticks down and income rose slightly.

A Bad Sign: North Korea test fires missiles during disarmament talks.

Tibet: Dalai Lama says he is not a separatist, chastises Chinese media.

Withdrawing from Iraq: The Media.

Pliers, Nipple Rings, Civil Rights: TSA forces woman to remove nipple rings before boarding flight.

Slate launches the Hillary Clinton Deathwatch.

Hillary Clinton is as good as dead. This became the consensus over the past week, when the media awoke en masse to the dual reality that 1) Clinton can’t close the pledged-delegate gap and 2) Obama has her beat in the popular vote. But the Clinton campaign shows no signs of slowing—she said herself she’s prepared to compete for at least three more months. So the question now is not just “How dead is she?” but “When will she realize it?”

…

In the tradition of Slate’s Saddameter (gauging the likelihood of invading Iraq), the Clintometer (measuring the chances of a Lewinsky-related ousting), and the Gonzo-meter (charting the attorney general’s demise), we bring you the Hillary Deathwatch, a daily update on Hillary Clinton’s dwindling chances of winning the Democratic nomination.

Slate puts Hillary’s chances of winning the nomination at 12%—unfair? Those odds are better than the odds given by a Clinton campaign staffer last week. But Clinton is threatening to stay in the race for another three months—because, hey, if this mehadist can’t have the White House, no one can.

Well, no other Democrat can.

Some ledes write themselves:

A New Zealand man who claimed he was raped by a wombat and that the experience left him speaking with an Australian accent has been found guilty of wasting police time.

A very proper BBC news presenter gets an uncontrollable case of the giggles—while reading an obituary.

The Eiffel Tower goes untouched.