...but this ad for Extended Stay Hotels doesn't exactly make me wanna book a room in one of their stank-ass hotels. Via Sullivan.

This has to be the nicest replica of Michelangelo's Moses that I've ever seen in a parking lot.

This dapper young caricature is called Dennis Lennox. He's 24 and "the youngest delegate or alternate from Michigan."

He didn't have anything original to say—except that the protestors should cancel their march on account of the hurricane—but isn't he cute? Like Republican Ken. Or a stylish lemur.

Sammy Hagar was wearing pink Crocs. That's all you need to know.

Then this poor guy, who is also from New Orleans, got up and tried to auction off a guitar for a hurricane relief fund:

Maybe Sammy played it that night. Maybe he signed it that night. It was kind of hard to hear because the Southern delegation was drunk, yapping, and wouldn't pay attention. These guys—I swear to you—were discussing golf. It was like a cartoon:

"C'mon all you people who make a lot of money in Washington," the auctioneer said. "Can I please have your attention?"

He could not.

Protestors were a couple of miles away, getting lashed up at Pi Bar and having some kind of queer-carnival event.

(I swung the hammer; I hit the bell.)

The next morning, a few protestors from Seattle got up from the couches in the apartment where they were staying, rubbed their eyes, and wrote the number of a legal-defense fund on their bodies with Sharpies, assuming they'd be arrested today.

Their plan is to lock down the streets to prevent the delegates from meeting today (as they must, for convention protocol.) Teams from different cities are taking different sectors around the Xcel Center. They wouldn't share their plan of attack.

"Meet you at the barricades!" one said as I rode off on my bicycle. "I've always wanted to say that."

Looks like there's one in downtown Minneapolis, too. Guards in camouflage stand watch over Second St...

... and hide behind walls when they realize you're taking their picture. (See the bit of orange vest out from behind the pillar?)

We played an eerie game of hide and seek for a few minutes. They'd stand, I'd point my camera, they'd scurry away. They'd peek out again, I'd raise my camera, they'd scurry away. They all watched me, some through binoculars, and talked into their walkie-talkies. Nobody came down to question me.

Spotted by our magical bookkeeper Renee.

Also, are there any other words in the English language that have three consecutive pairs of letters like the word bookkeeper does? I can't think of any. Then again, I suck at Scrabble.

This weekend, after a previously planned out-of-town trip for a story fell through, I decided to take a road trip to Ocean Shores.

(And here, within the snug confines of these parentheses, I will go a little bit LiveJournal on your ass. The topic of conversation will continue after this self-indulgent break: Having grown up in Maine, I'm fond of cheesy, touristy beach communities, because they remind me of home. The trip itself was kind of difficult. After four hours in traffic, I finally arrived: it was 50 degrees and foggy with light rain. The next morning, it was so foggy that you couldn't see further than thirty feet in any direction, which made for a pleasant, though weirdly apocalyptic, walk on the beach. The fog did not stop me from getting a very bad sunburn. The end.)

My question is this: How the fuck is it still legal to drive cars on beaches in Washington state? Or, to be more specific: why are beaches considered part of the highway system, with a 25-mile-an-hour speed limit? This is just a bad idea. Besides the fact that people drink at the beach, and that people tend to, you know, take naps on blankets at the beach, cars also leak all kinds of horrible fluids. Is there a powerful beach-driving lobby in Washington? Will people get pissed if they can't drive on beaches anymore?

There are lots of states where you can't drive on beaches—I'm from one—and never have I heard any variation of "You know, this beach experience would be so much better if I could park my fucking Hummer right next to me while I tan and drink beer out of a cooler in back." It seems like banning cars from public beaches is a really simple, really non-controversial environmental law that should've been passed ages ago.

Go to Smoke Farm, that raw, 360-acre wonderland just an hour north of Seattle that is slowly becoming the place where I want to die—down by the river, on a late spring evening—and let the coyotes chew on my bones.

(Briefly: Smoke Farm is a former dairy farm run by a few well-intentioned people—Stuart Smithers, a UPS philosophy professor; Craig Hollow, a local architect; others—where good things happen. It has hosted theater and literary retreats, education programs, medieval cook-outs with the best chefs in Seattle, and so on. There's a field where people camp, a river where people swim, a rustic kitchen where people congregate and meet and cook and drink: It's pretty much paradise.)

Smoke Farm's third annual performance festival begins tomorrow. It's $25, including dinner and camping. (Cheap!) The acts will vary: some of last year's performances were awful, one—by Implied Violence—was shattering, and the dinner was prompt, plentiful, and delicious.

This year's roster has some promising folks:

Circus Contraption
PDL
Doug Nufer
Matthew Richter
Left Field Revival
and others

Dinner by Seth Caswell (formerly of the Stumbling Goat). Good weather by God.

More information here.

Portland is magical place where you can sit with your brother outside a cafe in public park and enjoy your beers—responsibly!—without a moat and two fences separating you and your filthy beer from the impressionable children—think of the children!—splashing around in a wading pool just yards away. In Washington state, of course, the Liquor Control Board is ever vigilant about keeping children far from adults enjoying their despicable alcoholic beverages.

We live in a bullshit state.

But, hey, you can still smoke in bars down here—for a few more months—which totally blows. And you can have dinner at Clyde Commons, which totally rocks. (Mmm... pork belly...) But, on the other hand, you can go to a strip club and ogle naked ladies with a drink in your hand to accompany/numb with the lump in your pants. (Just in theory—we're not going to any strip clubs. Hi, Colleen!) So there are, you know, trade offs.

Okay—off to Powell's to pick up a copy of Robert Fagles new translation of Virgil's Aeneid. And how gay is that? "Pretty damn gay," says my brother, but how would he know? Breeder!

Well, MyFox Utah sent a photojournalist to report on the Black Monday Society. I can't embed the player here, but the above link works just fine. It's worth watching to hammer home the fact that these people are really doing this. It's also worth watching because it's probably been years since you've heard that "Hey Man, Nice Shot" song that was really a mid-'90's classic. Most notable about this video for me is that this superhero, Crawler:

says he got involved with the Black Monday Society because of my article. Which means that I kind of created a superhero. Which means, as Jonah Spangenthal-Lee pointed out, that I must be a super-villain.

I know the majority of Slog readers would rather bite the heads off live rats than travel to the Eastside, but just in case they are lured to the dark side for any reason this weekend, I was wondering if it would be servicey to remind them that the Wilburton tunnel is getting destroyed this weekend and so south 405 in Bellevue will be closed between SE 8th and I-90.

Here's the link. I had no idea that a tunnel was going to be destroyed this weekend. It sounds like it'll be awesome: Can I watch?

Thanks to PopTart for being servicey so that we don't have to, and woe betide anyone who dares to head east this weekend.