Charles D'Ambrosio knocking on Ernest Hemingway's door.

These boys accosted me last night shortly after I arrived in Bloomington, Indiana. It was nearly midnight when I got to town and I was restless and hungry, so I left my hotel to find something to eat. I wound up on Kirkwood, just off campus, where there wasn't much to eat besides pizzas and pitas and subs. Walking back to my hotel—which is in the middle of Indiana University's insanely beautiful campus—I passed a food truck selling fresh-baked cookies. The boy on the left in the picture above, Dan, asked me to buy him a cookie. His friend Zac, on the right, told me that they run the Philadelphia cheese steak truck that's usually out on this corner and if I came back tomorrow night he would "set me up" with a cheese steak if I bought his friend Dan a cookie. The woman in the truck—exasperated with Dan and Zac—asked the boys to leave me alone. But Dan was persistent, telling me he'd do anything—anything—if I would just buy him a cookie. The picture doesn't do Dan justice; he's one of those people who looks better when he isn't smiling. He looks best, in fact, when he's leaning in close, alcohol on his breath, and promising to do anything—absolutely anything—for a cookie.

I love college towns.

(For Brendan Kiley.)

Note the feet.

Soldiers à côté de soldiers.

Some of the art in a gay bar in the Marais. An inflatable Mickey Mouse and an inflatable Spiderman, each being crucified. I'm at a loss here. Help me out, Jen?

Note the store on the lower left.

(There's a close-up after the jump.)

...someone gets her head blown off.

There was a zombie walk in downtown Portland today. It was a beautiful day for staggering around in stage makeup and torn clothes. Looked like fun. But joining a zombie walks is too risky. Maybe I'm paranoid—maaaaaybe—but I think it's only a matter of time before some lunatic sees a crowd of zombies coming down the street and reacts the way he's seen the hero react in a million zombie movies: shoot the zombies in the head. I went to the gym instead.

Elevated transit, dedicated bus lanes, district elections for city council—the list of things that work in other cities but could never, ever work in Seattle is long and mostly bogus. But I ran across something yesterday that works fine in Pullman but would never work in Seattle: Snap Fitness. It's a gym that's open 24 hours a day but only "staffed" seven hours a day. Between 10-1 and 3-7 there's someone there selling memberships, including day passes, cleaning up, keeping an eye on things. The rest of the time members let themselves in with key cards. The gym works well in Pullman. In Seattle it would turn into a bathhouse in a week.

The beer selection at Rico's Pub is surprisingly awesome.

It doesn't take much to make the front page of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

The former president—long deceased—of WSU looks a lot like that guy on Seinfeld (who wound up hosting Family Feud) crossed with Ted Danson (who is totally hilarious on Bored to Death). In a related development Shelley Long, who starred on Cheers with Danson, was totally hilarious on Modern Family, which is totally hilarious.

UPDATE: Dom says that this dead president looks like someone threw Bill Clinton and Dave Reichert's sperm together in a supercollider and impregnated Barbara Bush. In a related development, it is four o'clock and we are drinking.

UPDATE 2: Dom insists that I have to write "Bill Clinton's sperm and Dave Reichert's sperm" or else it will be read as their mutual sperm being thrown together—the sperm from their shared testes—which would, of course, be redundant. Because, you see, if Clinton and Reichert shared testes you wouldn't have to throw their sperm together because it would arrive pre-mixed. I disagree with Dom. I think it's clear that Clinton and Reichert are autonomous individuals, males both, who would, perforce, possess two sets of testes, two scrotums, and two urethras between them, and that a reasonable person would understand "Bill Clinton and Dave Reichert's sperm" as a reference to two loads blown that had been combined, not one load that Clinton and Reichert were somehow mutually responsible for blowing. I further assert that Dom underestimates your intelligence, dear reader. And what of the supercollider? Hm? Dom?

WSU has a row team. You can rent a rower. You can rent as many rowers as you like for $12 an hour. The rent-a-rower request form here. You cannot order your eggs sunny-side-up at the Old European. The waitress—who hit a deer on her way to work today—can tell you why.

This is in the trophy case—the trophy case?—at the Holiday Inn Express in Pullman, Washington:

So Dom and I are staying at 1996 Hotel of the Year... but... is it the hotel of the year out of all the hotels in the world? All the hotels in Pullman? All the Holiday Inn Express hotels? All the hotels built in 1996? I asked the receptionist. No one knows. It's a mystery.

That's a basketball team streaming by the Starbucks where I'm Slogging. (Sorry about the picture quality, particularly because some of those boys are hot.) Those granola bars aren't weighing so heavily on my mind now. I'm sitting here praying that the team, as hot as some of members of it are, aren't headed to the gate that my flight departs from. (N-2, if the information screens can be trusted—WHICH THEY CAN'T. Hey, if you're reading this near N-2, drop by and say hello.) I think it's risky to fly with sports teams—high school, college, professional. It's tragedy bait. The plane goes down, a whole team perishes, a school mourns, a town rallies, a new live team goes out and wins the championship in memory of the old dead team. Book deals are made, film rights are purchased, movies are released. And the Tragedy of Alaska Flight 326—feels kinda jinxy to type that—is forever reduced to the 20 or so athletes who died in the disaster, never mind the 150 or so other people on board. They don't even get walk-ons in the movies about the airline crash that took their lives.

If my plane crashes I want my death mentioned in the first or second paragraph, not relegated to a list in the sidebar ("Other Passengers On Alaska 326"). Is that selfish of me?

Good to know.

Those cups of yogurt that Starbucks sells? The ones that come with a little bit of granola under the bubble/lid? Those are broken up granola bars. The larger pieces are flat, some pieces have edges, corners. So that granola in there, plural, is actually a broken up granola bar, singular. I even know the brand of granola bar they're breaking up. So... what's the deal? It can't be cheaper to pay someone to turn granola into bars and then pay someone else to break those bars back down to their pre-bar condition, can it? Are you buying up surplus granola bars somwhere? Or are they past or approaching their sell-buy-date granola bars? What gives, Starbucks?

An ad in the bus-terminal-quality waiting room at LAX...

Drink Volvic? Just drink it? Aren't we morally obligated to bathe in the stuff?

In other LAX news: I watched a dad watch his kid charge an emergency-exit/authorized-personnel-only door, open it, and set off the alarm: BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP. The dad said sorry, sorry, then slinked away with his kid, leaving those of us waiting to board at Gate 38 to suffer. The alarm has been going off for, oh, twenty minutes now. It's going to be a good day.

This woman freaks me the fuck out. Her eyes, her eyebrows, her cheek implants... this woman freaks me the fuck out. You ever seen her? She freak you out? Or is it just me?