Paul Constant on Eating, Vomiting, and Other Sports
"I was supposed to be on a diet. But I've always had a weak spot for eating contests. When I heard the competitors would include two-time Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, I had to do it. Rossi is just the kind of smug macho GOP jus' folks millionaire fucker who makes my blood boil. I might not be able to do much, but I do know I can eat..."

Dominic Holden Tours the Four "Parks" that the Mariners Insist Should Prevent a Strip Club from Being Allowed Near the Stadium
"Having never thought of Safeco Field nor anything near it as parklike, I asked Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale to give me a tour of these four 'parks.' Wearing a blue parka and a dour face, Hale first took me to 'Safeco Plaza,' a 60-foot-wide sidewalk south of Safeco Field. A man sat on a bench, wolfing down a sandwich, and Hale pointed out he was using the area like a park. However, during the team's 81 annual home games, this 'park and open space' fills up with buses, which use the plaza for overflow parking..."

Brendan Kiley Wonders: Why Do Austin and Portland Have World-Class Performance Festivals, But Not Seattle?
"What we need is a real, grown-up, curated festival with violence and nudity and smart people doing weird things onstage. Something built to animate the city in atypical ways—events in art galleries and rock music clubs and warehouses and on closed-off freeways..."

Erica C. Barnett on the Rise and Fall of Bacon
"Thankfully, baconmania has almost run its course. Trends inevitably go through their phases—early adoption, buzz, general excitement, overexposure—and bacon is in its terminal stage, clinging to relevance, grasping at any opportunity to cash in on its dwindling cachet as its 15 minutes come to an end..."

Swine Flu: What Did We Learn?
"Even though the wall-to-wall swine-flu coverage on Slog probably made you panic more than you needed to, panicking made you wash your hands 30 times a day, which is probably what kept you from getting sick..."

Bethany Jean Clement Revisits the Frontier Room
"In the olden days, the place was beyond shabby. The bar's decor was brought to you by darkness, which was fine; you wouldn't have wanted to see anything in there too well, anyway..."

Dave Segal Profiles Seattle Musician Erik Blood
"Blood's songs bear elegant contours, and their hooks stick in your mind like a nutritious goo while avoiding cloying obviousness. Crafted with care and expertly produced, The Way We Live seems destined to attain pop-classic status..."

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: Charles Mudede on the local hiphop duo Fresh Espresso, plus lots more in the music section; Jen Graves untangles a public-art debacle in Olympia; Dan Savage's advice for the father of a 14-year-old who's just come out; reviews of new books; a rave review of Star Trek, plus lots more in the film section; Eli Sanders on the Kirkland start-up that sounded the alarm on swine flu; Erica C. Barnett on two candidates for King County Executive from the Eastside, plus online-only interviews with them here and here; I, Anonymous; Last Days; Control Tower; how to win $2,000 for taking off your clothes; and all the other columns and calendars and doodads.

And now, the Illustrated Comment of the Week: