Yeah, she's good—but she doesn't have the stamina, BuzzFeed, she can't go the distance. I get more stupid questions than that in five freakin' minutes via email and you don't see me storming out of the room.

A few Sloggers—and my boyfriend—are wondering why I've been in LA all month. I'm down here working on what's called "a non-airing presentation pilot for HBO." Or... "Savage Love," the (potential) TV show. According to a draft of press release that's sitting on my desk here at HBO—in my own office! with a lock on the door! I could be naked in here!—"Savage Love," the (potential) teevee show, "will focus on current events and cultural trends with sex as the filter." I'm hoping to bring a new kind of conversation to TV about sex—an honest conversation, one that's informed without being (too) wonky, funny without being (too) cruel, sexy without being (too) cheesy. Basically, my sex-advice column—but on the teevee!

If any Sloggers are in LA next Thursday or want to come to LA next Thursday to be a part of the live studio audience at the taping of the "Savage Love" pilot—I'll save you a seat, Loveschild!—you can get tickets by clicking here.

I know, right?

The details:

The Northwest's very first Literary Death Match will feature a stunning combination of writers and smartists, including readers Ryan Boudinot (The Littlest Hitler), Matthew Simmons (A Jello Horse), Peter Gajdics (Opium8’s 500-word contest winner), and Matt Briggs (Shoot the Buffalo), all judged by a cast of all-stars, including the sagacious Mary Guterson (Gone to the Dogs), Lindy West (from The Stranger), and Luke Smith (a game designer at Bungie and former 1UP.com editor).

Only 60 seats available!

Hosted by Todd Zuniga. Co-produced by Julia Minkin.

When: Thursday, August 13; doors at 6:30, show at 7:45 p.m. (sharp)
Where: Jewelbox Theater
2322 2nd Ave, Seattle
Cost: $10

Come down if you are so inclined, and feel the sting of my enormous gavel!

You don't love two women at the same time. In fact, it's quite obvious that you don't really love either of these women.

Amy can't set aside her feelings about adultery long enough to answer the dude's question: "Is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time?" You can be in love with more than one person at the same time. It's more complicated, of course, and running around behind the wife's back isn't the path toward a healthy, functional poly relationship. Successful poly relationships are built on honesty and trust, not lies and betrayals. But they can and do exist.

And maybe Amy knows it: she writes that you don't love two women at the same time, not that you can't. Poor word choice? Or tacit acknowledgement that it is possible to be in love with more than one person at at time? The latter, I think. But open relationships—particularly successful ones—make traditional types like Amy uncomfortable. And as an advice columnist, ahem, Amy gets to declare things in or out of bounds; it's her column, the dude sought her advice. So she says it just isn't "done" because she doesn't think people should, and not because people don't.

But I agree with Amy that the adultery in this instance can't be justified. It doesn't sound like the dude has grounds to sneak around: he hasn't been cut off by the wife. If you haven't been backed into a corner—if you aren't getting any at home and can't divorce because of kids or other legit considerations—permissible, ethical adultery requires advance notice and negotiation.

This year, we thought it would be helpful for all you HUMP!ers (and you are working on your film already, right? The deadline is September 21st, after all, and the summer's whizzing by) if the judges shared a little bit of their advice about what makes a good HUMP! film. Here's what I believe matters most:

Everyone needs to be having fun. This is the HUMP! Golden Rule. Everyone from the actors to the cinematographer to the prop manager needs to be having the time of their lives. I've seen one or two movies where one of the participants is only taking part to please their partner, and they make for awkward viewing (special note to that super-fucking-gorgeous leggy brunette who was trying her damnedest to make her douchey man happy in a supposedly funny movie last year: You can do so, so much better.)

If you're going to peg, fucking peg already. There were several movies last year in which women pegged their men. None of those men actually allowed the pegging to happen; instead, they just mimed a caricature of what they thought having a dildo up their butts would feel like. Are you really that cowardly, hetero boy HUMP!ers? Let your ladies in! It'll make your movie 500% hotter.

Cut at least a minute from your final cut. Many of the movies are just way too long. More than half of a good movie is editing. You need to look at virtually every frame of the film and ask yourself: Is this really essential to the movie? Does it move things along? Can it be cut?

Oh, and more lesbians, please. Or at the very least, some hot solo girl scenes. We had more girl-on-girl action last year than ever before, but the numbers are still not equal. And we could use some more gay guys, too, while you're at it. More of everything, come to think of it.

I can't wait to see what you've got in your pants, Seattle. Thanks for HUMP!ing.

And this week of Daily Muppets will conclude with a bang: I'll be hosting the midnight-thirty showing of Muppet Treasure Island at the Egyptian Theater this Friday. (As I understand it, "hosting" just means I'll be giving free stuff away and then watching the Muppet movie with everyone else.)

Muppet Treasure Island is notable for several important reasons. For instance, I'm pretty sure it's the Muppet movie that gives Sam the Eagle the most screen-time (oh, how I love Sam the Eagle). The costars, especially Tim Curry and Billy Connoly, are particularly skilled at human-Muppet interactions. It's also the movie that caused Spam to sue the Muppets. From Wikipedia:

Hormel Foods Corporation, makers of Spam, sued the film production company for using the name "Spa'am" for one of the film's wart hog characters. Their suit was defeated on September 22, 1995. The judge dismissed it after a trial for failure to prove damages, noting, "one might think Hormel would welcome the association with a genuine source of pork."

I hope you'll cap off your week with me this Friday at the Egyptian.

One Pot also has a Sievert's event this evening at the opening of the Suddenly Exhibition in Pioneer Square. These are things you might like to do.

I'm speechless.

With a key legislative committee poised to vote on a marijuana decriminalization bill today, one of the nation's leading marijuana advocacy groups has disbanded its Connecticut chapter after the local's vice president was arrested for allegedly implying harm against a state senator.

Dominic Vita, vice-president of the Connecticut chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, was charged Friday with disorderly conduct. He's accused of sending an e-mail saying he was "getting ready to go postal" to Sen. Toni Boucher, an opponent of relaxing marijuana laws.

"It's hardly a fortuitous time for this to occur," Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of NORML. "It's hard enough to get marijuana laws reformed. Those kind of mistakes make it harder."

I mean, Washington State Speaker of the House Frank Chopp killed a bill to decriminalize marijuana this year, several sources in the legislature have told me. But I wouldn't threaten "go postal" over it. I think we ought to pick a new Speaker of the House—you know, someone who harnesses the Democratic supermajority to pass bills supported by his or her party, supports the party's interest in health care reform, doesn't throw progressive issues under the bus, and who isn't an all-around feckless sissy. Because feckless sissies like Frank Chopp don't deserve to be threatened with violence; they deserve to be voted out of office and remembered as feckless sissies.

Dan's going to be missing the office Happy Gay-Time happy hour after work, celebrating the awesome parade of recent gay-marriage legalization, location T.B.D. But if you need a good happy hour, The Stranger's got a (free!) new happy-hour iPhone app that'll hook you right up. Cheers, everybody!

UPDATE! Tina in comments, your wish is the Elite's command: They have tons of TVs and promise to turn one of them to CNN with sound at 6 p.m. I don't think bars are legally allowed to condone drinking games, but the Elite's happy hour goes until 8 o'clock, with $2.75 Bud/Bud Lite, $3.50 wells, and $5.50 double wells. I am now thirsty. Good day.

Movie tickets are on sale NOW for This American Life—Live!, our stage show that will be beamed via satellite to more than 400 movie screens nationwide on Thursday, April 23rd.

Ira Glass will host an actual episode of the radio program, performed onstage by some of our favorite contributors. Dan Savage, Starlee Kine, and Mike Birbiglia will tell stories. David Rakoff and Dave Hill will conduct a ‘special investigation.’ Plus a new cartoon by Chris Ware, additional visuals by Arthur Jones, and a very special appearance by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer! The performance will last around two hours. We’re going to capture the whole thing with a bunch of HD cameras, and send it live* to movie theatres all over the country.

It’s gonna be a fun night. We hope you’ll come. One night only. Thursday, April 23rd. In select movie theatres and performing arts centers nationwide.

*8 PM EDT / 7 PM CDT / 6 PM MDT and time delayed to 8PM PDT (also 8 PM in Arizona and 7 PM in Hawaii).

This American Life—Live! is one week from tonight. More info about the show and ticket availability here.

This weekend, Schmader will reprise Straight: A Conversion Comedy, his hilarious and tragic monologue about his hilarious and tragic undercover adventures through the world of ex-gay conversion.

Straight premiered at Re-bar in 1999, when I was 20 years old and writing for my college paper. I snuck into the bar, sat in the back, and had one of the strongest, most memorable theater experiences of my life. I still remember the story about the ex-gay talent show, with somebody (Schmader?) playing guitar while singing out horrible, God-sent afflictions from the Old Testament. And the urinal showdown—will he look? won't he?—with an ex-gay in the bathroom. And the butch, ex-gay lesbian stuffed into a Laura Ashley dress "about as comfortably as a German Shepherd wears a sweater."

And I remember Schmader being tortured by the desire to blow his cover—to grab her and shake her and remind her that she was, is, and always will be a dyke, but: "in the words of Thomas Jefferson, it's a free fucking country." Mostly, I remember how the audience veered from howling laughter to quiet, almost wincing silence.

The first version of Straight was directed by Dan Savage and ran for six months. The OBIE-winning Chay Yew, with support from the fancy-pants Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, directed a second iteration. This run is a warm-up before the show, which is basted and broiled in Texas culture, makes its Texas debut.

Says Schmader: Pray for us.

Straight—which I totally would have suggested if Schmader didn't work for this paper—runs Friday and Saturday at 8 pm at Annex Theater, at Pike and 11th. It's $15 from Brown Paper Tickets. More information in our theater calendar.

But I don't think TINAC should have to "find a couple who had the good judgment not to have children"; TINAC did not target this couple, she's not a home wrecker. But if mom and dad got through the majority of their children's lives without a live-in third, they can get through the next few years without their third living under the same roof. Why not let the kids mature, and move out, before their third moves in? If the mom and dad and their girlfriend are in love now, and if it's true love (poly variety), it'll be true love two or three years from now. And the kids will be more likely to accept the third if she wasn't imposed on them while they were still living at home. Consideration and constancy—kids have a right to both.

I do, however, agree that Prudie was uncharacteristically snarky; she doesn't typically treat people in more traditional relationships, and with more traditional problems, with such contempt.

I recently talked to an Apple contractor, friend of a friend, whose job was to track down fraudulent iTunes cards. He said American CCs are often hijacked in bulk to purchase US gift cards, which are then pumped into restricted worldwide markets that would prefer to use US iTunes. Could be as simple as that. But maybe, just maybe, everyone who used a credit card at the Aurora Taco Bell a few days ago is feeling my pain. And not just the cheesy-bean-and-rice burrito kind of pain. Ugh.

After Sherill Lee's death, the family still had to pay for those expensive weeks of medical care. Smith came up with one idea to help: He had a collection of paintings he'd picked up over the years at garages and thrift stores. Abandoned paintings. He decided to do a "Lost Picture Show."

Smith put 23 of these rummaged treasures on Flickr, and asked prominent Seattle writers to adopt one each, and write something about it. The writing could be prose, poetry, criticism—anything. Each painting, with its bit of writing attached, would be sold in a silent auction at Tether.

Tomorrow night's the night for that auction. It starts at 5:30. The full list of writers, including Lauren Weedman, Cienna Madrid, Rebecca Brown, Kurt B. Reighley, Spencer Moody, Anna Maria Hong, and Trisha Ready, is here.

The full spectacle of the 23 paintings, on Flickr (without the writings attached—they'll be on display tomorrow), is here.

Reighley, for instance, has written about this painting. (His penis is fire!)

And you can learn a little more about the late Sherrill Lee Williams—honorary member of the Piston Packin' Mamas Vintage Car Club—here.

My former colleague Amy Ruiz (nee Amy Jenniges) is, as many Stranger readers already know, currently a sustainability and urban policy advisor to Portland Mayor Sam Adams, lately in the news for lying about his relationship with an 18-year-old legislative assistant named Beau Breedlove. Ruiz came to Adams' office after six years as a staff reporter at the Stranger and two years as news editor at the Portland Mercury, the Stranger's sister paper. Ruiz, along with her co-news editor Scott Moore, had pursued the Adams story in 2007, but dropped the story after the reporters were unable to substantiate the charges (and after Adams lied to them, twice, about the allegations.) This week, Nigel Jaquiss, a reporter for Mercury competitor Willamette Week, broke the story that Adams had lied about the relationship. Jaquiss's story strongly implied that Ruiz was unqualified for her position, and that Adams had hired Ruiz to take her off the story. It also raised the question of whether Ruiz had stopped working on the story to increase her chances of getting the job.

Before I go into why I think that scenario is unlikely, let me say that the idea of Amy sitting on a story to get a job is preposterous. The fact is, sometimes your competitor gets the story; in this case, as Merc editor Steve Humphrey notes, the Mercury didn't have the goods. The alternative —running a story alleging the mayor had been sleeping with a teenager without evidence or on-the-record sources—would have been irresponsible and unethical.

But the fact that Adams hired Ruiz—knowing that he had lied to her about his relationship with Breedlove, knowing what it would look like if the story ever came out—raises some obvious questions, including whether Ruiz was qualified for the job. In comments on Slog and the Mercury, as well as posts on Gawker and the Poynter Institute, observers have concluded that Ruiz was unqualified and called for her to resign0; "Amy Ruiz is NOT, I repeat NOT qualified for her position at all. Adams needs to resign NOW, and Amy needs to resign now or be fired!" one typical Mercury commenter says.

I can't speak to the specific qualifications for this particular job, because I wasn't at the interviews and don't know what the rest of the applicant pool was like. What I can say is that journalists frequently go into government work, and that they often do well there. Writers—particularly writers at alt-weeklies like the Mercury, which was paying Ruiz about $42,000 for a management-level position—often decide they'd like to make more money, or work fewer hours, or have a job with less daily stress. Staying in journalism for the rest of your life is not a part of the journalist's ethical compact. A few local journalists who've decided to move on to more lucrative pastures: Casey Corr; George Howland; Jean Godden; Marty McOmber; Alex Fryer; Jim Compton; Robert Mak; Sandeep Kaushik; James Bush. And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Many more, certainly, have been approached to work on campaigns or in government positions and said no.

Politicians like to hire journalists not because we tend to have post-bachelor's degrees or extensive policy experience, or because they think it's a smart way to get good reporters off their backs, but because we know how to communicate to the media—what kind of communication gets good coverage, and what kind gets you ignored or mocked. It's speculation, but a fair assumption, that Ruiz's lack of urban-planning experience was eclipsed by her long experience as a member of the press.

In an email, Ruiz describes her job as follows:

Day to day, this is a job of translating Sam [Adams]'s policy objectives to the Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, and translating their land use and sustainability projects to council, staff and stakeholders - both explaining the details of the projects, and their relevance to the broader city. My hard skills—asking tough questions, synthesizing and analyzing information—are invaluable. And my prior working relationships from the staff level on up to council members helps me move Sam's agenda forward.

What it comes down to is that I'm not writing land use code or rezoning the city—that's what the planners in the bureau do. I'm the conduit between the political objectives and vision in the Mayor's office, and the staff carrying out the great work.

The unanswered question, in my mind, is on Adams's side: Leaving aside whether Ruiz was the most qualified applicant, why did he hire her, knowing that the story of his relationship with Breedlove might come out? Since Adams isn't talking, we can only speculate: Maybe he was being nefarious, hoping to keep Ruiz off the story. If that's true, then he would have been smart to also hire Jaquiss, Moore, and all the Oregonian reporters who were chasing the same story—and their editors, too, while he was at it. More likely, Adams hubristically assumed the story would never come out, or didn't care what impact it would have on Ruiz and the rest of his staff. My guess is Adams was stupid or naive callous or all three; in any case, Adams, not Ruiz, is the bad guy here.

Sandeep—who left the Stranger in 2005 to work for King County Executive Ron Sims—offers his own take over here.

Human heart cells beat under a microscope. They started out as embryonic stem cells.

“The work that we're doing is to try to regenerate the heart after a heart attack. We've been able to take stem cells and turn them into human heart muscles in a dish and we've learned how to make the cells survive after we transplant them," said Chuck Murry, MD, PhD, University of Washington.

Embryonic cells are the only kind of stem cells that do that. But the work has been slowed due to federal restrictions. Dr. Murry is hopeful that will change soon.

Hi Nina! Hi Kareen!

Updated, because I loved this when I came upon it eight long, long, long years ago:
Bush Finds Error In Fermilab Calculations

Kissel's got a nice little scoop up right now about the fact that Dave Reichert—the "moderate" Republican rep from Washington State's 8th District—voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act, which overturned a Supreme Court ruling that set a 180-day window on salary discrimination claims. The ruling—named after a woman who discovered she had been making less than less-qualified, less-experienced men for years—said that women could only sue for discrimination within 180 days of the date the discrimination began. The Dems carried the legislation, which Obama has named as one of his top priorities, 247-171.

The little boy doesn't know who Dr. Ruth is, but he knows who I am. As a parent that concerns me. But thanks, ABC!

For the past six weeks at the Central Cinema, I've been hosting From Bad to Worse: A Six-Week Study in Cinematic Terribleness, in which six movies renowned for their horribleness were screened in their entirety before an audience free to sass back and order beer and pizza.

It's been a great, funky time, in part because of how oddly dramatic these past six weeks have been, with the recession and the snow and snow and floods and more recession. But every Monday night, we'd put aside our daily stresses and dive into the crappiest films known to man. I'm tempted to say "I learned a lot!," but I'm actually left with mostly questions. Is it morally defensible to ask people to leave their homes and pay money to watch Leonard Part Six? When humanity faces its ultimate Judgment Day, will Sylvester Stallone's performance in Rhinestone be used to damn the species for eternity? And who knew so many grown men and women would be willing to brave snow and ice and sleet (SLEET!) to see Can't Stop the [Fucking] Music?

Through all of these screenings I've sat in the back and watched both the films and their audiences, wearing a lavender chenille robe exactly like Cristal Conners' above. It has been illuminating. Thanks to all who've participated, especially the small handful of individuals who sat within earshot of me and said things so hilarious I was required to stop the film and share your private wisecracks with the group. (You know who you are).

The final screening in the series is this Monday, when we'll behold the horror that is Gigli.

Two days later at the Showbox, I'll be hosting a one-night screening of the greatest, richest, and most entertaining of all horrible films—Showgirls, which has served as a key referent throughout From Bad to Worse, hovering over the series like a glittery smog. (Showgirls screens at 8pm on Wed Jan 14, full info here.)