The Champion sports apparel outlet store in Grants Pass is closing. If you've ever been in there, you know it's a slice of Oregon that can't be replaced. RoguePundit has the scoop.

Well, the Jeopardy guy finally lost, after 75 shows. It was bound to happen eventually.

But I can't believe the Final Jeopardy question that he blew in the end:

Category: Business and Industry

Clue: Most of this firm's 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year

Duh! Come on, Ken!

Across the country, you could hear the tax lawyers telling their spouses: "I should go on that show." (Via AboutItAll.)

A Portland State University grad student in biology has an academic paper coming out soon on the auditory system of the Cuban tree frog. And she has some interesting weekend hobbies, too.

Best of luck to her.

Lost in the haze of the gluttonous weekend just past were a couple of news stories that deserved blog attention, but didn't get it. (Perhaps you missed a few items, too?) I'm going to try to catch up on them starting now.

The big bombshell was dropped in the O on Wednesday, but didn't catch my eye until I piled up the papers for recycling tonight: Zupan's Markets is not going through with its plan to open a new store in the condo tower being built at NE 16th and Weidler. The developer and Zupan's are slinging major kim chee at each other in a lawsuit, and the lease for the ground floor of the property has been cancelled.

Long-time readers of this blog know that this is really significant. The specter of a new Zupan's at that location, just northeast of Lloyd Center, apparently contributed to the demise of the once-proud Irvington Market. Times got tough for the produce operator in that market, and when he pulled out, no one was fool enough to step in and take on the impending Zupan's. Soon, without the fresh produce as a magnet, the rest of the shops in the market -- a butcher, a fish market, a deli, and a juice bar -- fell like dominoes. Now the nearest decent fresh fish is a 10-minute drive through Pearlie Hell to the City Market on NW 21st.

But the folks in the neighborhood took heart. Soon we'd have our $24-a-pound Copper River salmon right at our doorsteps once again, when Mr. Zupan opened another enchanted forest of high-end groceries at the foot of the condo tower.

Guess again.

Who knows why this aspect of the project failed? Was the developer acting in bad faith, was Zupan's, or were they both acting up? I smell somebody running out of money.

Meanwhile, the condo tower continues its hideous skyward climb. It's a bulky box, to say the least, with sidewalks on Weidler Street that are grotesquely narrow compared to the size and height of the building. There's no setback at all. Even with a prime anchor tenant, it would have been way too much building. With a collection of gumball stores on the ground floor -- like the motley crew of nondescript mall food court castoffs that now occupy the old Irvington Market space -- it will be a downright ugly place to be.

And forget about the surrounding properties. The poor florist on Broadway who held onto his fraction of a block rather than sell out to the condo weasels will likely live to regret his decision. His little skylight looks ridiculous now, surrounded on the south and west by multiple stories of housing. His plants will literally never see the sun. Ditto for the west-facing lots across the street on NE 17th. There will never be anything there now but another condo tower or "Fast Noodles on a Carousel R Us."

And you folks who are paying upwards of $800,000 to live in an apartment building on the corner of NE 16th and Weidler, let me give you an important link: here.

Ironically, in the same pile of newspapers I came across an article about how the folks in the raped and pillaged Lair Hill neighborhood (where the Mrs. and I lived for several years) are hoping to get some funding to rip out some of the obscene highway ramps that have destroyed their community for many decades. Now that the OHSU Aerial Tram is under construction, they can resume talking about some day, maybe, if there's ever any money for it, considering starting to eventually take the bridge approaches and freeway ramps out. But the neighbors will have to have patience -- a virtue that's not required of the rich doctors who will literally look down their noses into these folks' backyards in a couple of years. No waiting for grants when it's time to put money into Homer Williams's pockets. Just start ripping.

One of the factors that is listed in the article as wrecking the old Lair Hill are the condo towers that were built in the nearby South Auditorium district:

"It would help weave together sections of that neighborhood that have been pretty badly cut up by past transportation projects," Doss says.

Projects from the 1950s

Those projects, which include Interstate 5, Naito Parkway and the Ross Island Bridge's western end, were built primarily in the 1950s during the urban renewal of south Portland. Once a vibrant community of immigrants, the area began to lose energy with the opening of the Ross Island Bridge in 1926 and the rise of the automobile, according to neighborhood historian Stephen Leflar, who is in the planning group.

During the urban renewal in the 1950s, buildings on several dozen blocks were bulldozed and the roads were put in along with condominium towers.

But if you're a developer on the City Council A List, 50 years later, you still get to make all the mistakes you want. No doubt the taxpayers will clean them up later.

Another Thanksgiving weekend under my belt -- literally. There's something about this four-day period that puts me to sleep. Maybe it's the tryptophan, or maybe it's the lengthening shadows and long nights. But it's definitely a time to catch up on rest after a hectic couple of months. This year October and November have been even more action-packed than usual.

What lulls me to slumber more than anything else, though, is televised sports. I can't go more than 15 minutes in a prone position in front of a football or basketball game without crashing. I catch a few minutes of the game just as I conk out and come to, but that's about it.

Tonight I couldn't resist catching the end of the Sunday Night Football contest, and when I turned it on, I was delighted to see that it was snowing sideways where the game was being played, in Denver. It was an exciting finish, with the visiting Oakland Raiders coming from behind to beat the home team, the Broncos, in the fourth quarter. Players slipping and sliding in the snow, with the ball taking weird bounces and flying in odd trajectories. At the very end, a field goal was blocked because, given the conditions, the kick was way lower than normal.

But there was one aspect of the game that bothered me. If you've watched any football lately, you know that, thanks to the wonders of technology, we now see the first down marker on every play as a yellow stripe electronically superimposed across the field. It's done so well -- unlike an old-fashioned chroma-key insert -- that it looks exactly as though it was painted on the field along with the other stripes marking the yardage to the end zone.

In the snow, however, the yellow stripe reminded me of an old Frank Zappa tune so appropriate to the season. And it dawned on me: They definitely need a different color of stripe for the snow games.

Woo hoo!

Didn't get yours? No need to miss out on the festivities. Get one to call your very own here. (Sorry, no picture of Diane on the form this time.)

And remember -- just one more year after this. Then something will happen to stimulate our economy so wildly that this tax will go away. It's only temporary.

Uh huh.

OregonLive, the weak website run by the folks who bring us The Oregonian, has got bloggers on it these days. I've mostly avoided them because, well, blogs run by The O? How backward.

But lately I've been catching someone named Chris Snethen over there, and I'm liking what I'm reading. Snethen is down in the Mountain Park section of Lake Oswego, where I spent my Divorce Detention Camp period. He's got opinions, he's not shy about expressing them, and he writes well.

So check him out.

I've been so busy, I let a couple of priceless eBay items get away, here and here.

Another year, and once again my cup runneth over.

Happy Thanksgiving to my friends in the blogosphere.

This blog logged visit no. 225,000 within the last hour or so.

The visitor was looking for an auction at which to buy the cup that hit Indiana Pacer thug Ron Artest in the chest, triggering last Friday night's infamous brawl. Come to think of it, that would be a collector's item. How about Artest's face on a grilled cheese sandwich?

As usual, the lucky reader wins a free lifetime subscription to this blog. Thanks to everybody who visits here.

Last week I wrote about the James McManus book Positively Fifth Street, which covered poker and murder. The murder part concerned the trial of a couple accused of killing a member of the Binion family, which runs a prominent Las Vegas casino. In the book, they were found guilty, but they got a new trial. An alert reader points out that the retrial of these defendants ended with their acquittal yesterday.

On another front, The New York Times weighed in today with this editorial about that mysterious little "tax oversight" clause in the budget bill that's causing such a commotion.

Almost makes me like Texas again.

The Republican leadership in Congress wants to be able to send congressional committee staff members out to the IRS service centers and have them read your tax return.

At least, that's what they slipped into the big budget bill that's awaiting the President's signtaure.

That is, until somebody noticed.

Now no one in either house of Congress is admitting to having even looked at the provision before voting on the bill.

The new Congress isn't even here yet, and already I can see that the next four years are going to be extremely depressing.

William Bragg, a blogger from Vancouver, B.C., was in town over the weekend, and he took some nice photos of downtown Portland on a beautiful autumn day. I'm kind of partial to this one, this one, and this one. But they're all worth a look.

Thanksgiving's almost here. Hard to believe, but the signs are all there. The days are near their shortest -- only a month until the solstice -- and the holiday season is rumbling toward us like a beeping, flashing, tinsel-bedecked steamroller.

The holidays always wind up being tough on me. By New Year's Day, I'm usually a basket case. The highs get really high, but the inevitable lows are really low.

This year, I'm resolving to try something new: a relatively even keel the whole way through. No self-inflicted pressure to experience the Greatest Christmas Ever. Let magic happen, without trying too hard to create it. If it's meant to be, it wil show up.

Is this even possible?

It was a week of rare occurrences. Not only did I finish a book that I was reading just for fun, but I also went to an actual movie theater and saw a first-run movie.

It was Ray, the biography of Ray Charles. Given how much I love his music, I was predisposed to enjoy the film, and I did. Jamie Foxx delivered a strong performance. The screenplay, although it included some apocryphal details, on the whole rang true. And while the running time was a bit long, that was only because there was so much of Ray's music included in the movie. I for one was left wanting more.

I've liked Foxx since I first saw him on the hilarious TV show In Living Color. In Ray, he took on an enormous challenge. And with his remarkable skills as a mimic and a pianist, he brought the role off well. It's hard to imagine another actor creating any better effect. Director Taylor Hackford kept the lens right in everyone's faces the whole time, so there was little room for error. Foxx didn't make any.

The kid who played Ray as a child (C.J. Sanders) was surprisingly good, too.

An added highlight was the trailer for an upcoming Bill Murray movie in which he sends up Jacques Cousteau (or at least, Cousteau types). That looks well worth another $8.50.

The gangsterization of professional basketball in the United States reached a new low tonight, when a game in Detroit between the hometown Pistons and the Indiana Pacers was called off prematurely in an effort to break up a dangerous brawl that had erupted between the Pacers and the Detroit fans.

It started with a blatant dirty foul by Pacer thug Ron Artest on Detroit forward Ben Wallace with less than a minute to play and Indiana comfortably ahead. Wallace charged Artest and slugged him, and the usual collision of pushing and shoving players ensued.

Artest is a jerk who really needs to find another job, but so far, it was just a typical basketball brawl. When he returned to the Indiana bench, however, a fan threw something at him. It looked like two ounces of beer in a plastic cup. It hit him in the chest as he lay on the scorer's table.

And that's where Mr. Artest did something totally, completely, utterly inexcusable.

He ran into the stands and cold-cocked a young guy. Apparently it wasn't the one who threw the cup, because the guy he hit was holding tightly onto his own beverage. When some of the nearby fans got into it, Artest whacked them pretty good, too. Then a few of his less intelligent teammates took it upon themselves to run up into the stands and help settle the score. Their behavior was not self-defense in any meaningful sense of that term. Chairs were eventually thrown. Pepper spray was brandished. People were hurt. At least one person was hospitalized. The game was called off.

Imagine what the young kids in that arena were feeling as they watched this unfold. Imagine me trying to explain this to my four-year-old daughter, who was watching it with me on television. Thanks, NBA, for another night of wholesome family fun.

Every single player who made contact with a fan should be suspended and fined for at least a third of the season. Anyone who actually threw a punch at a fan should sit out the rest of the season. Especially former Trail Blazer Jermaine O'Neal, who ran a good distance to take a serious shot to a fan's jaw (at 7:05 on this video) just as the fan was standing up after taking a punch from Artest. And Artest himself, who has been involved in many an anger control incident on the court over the years, should be banned from the NBA for life.

A two-month suspension would be too good for Artest. In fact, that's what he had the nerve to ask the team for last week -- time off to concentrate on his rap music record label. Looks like he figured out a way to get his leave of absence and blow off a little steam on a couple of little white boys' faces at the same time.

The commentators on ESPN should also get a good, swift kick in the pants. From their lofty perch in New York, they've kept themselves busy all night blaming "the despicable fans" who "provoked the brawl." Not having been there themselves, they speculate that some of the fans who had their lights punched out must have been yelling "racial slurs" at the Indiana players "throughout the night."

Of course some of the fans are at fault. The ones who committed assaults shoud be prosecuted for their crimes. (As should Artest, O'Neal and their teammates.)

But there is no excuse for a professional athlete to punch a spectator.

Ever. Ever, ever, ever.

Shame on the NBA. Shame on ESPN. What an embarassment to our country.

UPDATE, 11/20, 2:55 p.m.: Four players involved in the brawl have been suspended indefinitely, pending some sort of league review.

BTW, the video I linked to above has been cut back, and so there's no "7:05" on it any more. But the whole thing can now be seen here.

Every once in a while, I ask readers, "Do you pray?"

If you do, here. Do it. For all of them.

It's 16 days later, and I'm still reeling from the election. It's just an unspeakable outcome. Already I'm starting to get that resigned feeling -- just push down the rage and get ready to grin and bear it, every day, for four more years. Here's a site where a black mourning ribbon is now displayed to remind readers of what the red states have just done. Sounds about right to me.

There are many others who will continue to stand up and shout, however. Most of it makes me ill. For one thing, I don't want to hear "Bush stole the election again." At all. You want to question and reform the shabby election machinery we have in many places in this country? A most worthy cause. But let's stop talking about how Kerry really won. He lost. He was a weak candidate, he ran a dopey campaign, and he lost. It's over.

Curiously, the most comfort I'm taking right now is from the Sorry, Everybody site. I linked to this when there were only a few photos there. Now there are a couple of thousand. It's great to see faces attached to our dark feelings about our place in the world today, and the responses from abroad. What a great site. (Thanks to Portland's own tireless Bohemian Mama for providing the links and keeping the faith.)

The Goldschmidt Good Old Boy Network scored some points yesterday, as two of his lieutenants advanced toward public offices, so appointed by our illustrious governor. The Senate Rules Committee easily endorsed dozens of Governor Ted's appointees to state boards, commissions, and bureaucratic jobs, including a couple of Neil-ophytes.

One was Multnomah County Sheriff Bernie Giusto, who is being reappointed a director of Tri-Met. Giusto was The Goldschmidt's chauffeur at the time when, as governor, the latter was dealing with the very distraught girl with whom he had gotten it on when she was 14 years old. State Sen. Vicki Walker, the former abuse victim who's taken a keen interest in all things Goldschmidt, gave old Bernie (who went on to have a "special friendship" with his old boss' ex-wife) a hard time at the hearing yesterday. But his nomination sailed through the legislative committee.

For the scandal-plagued board of Saif, the governor offers us "Rev." Matt Hennessee, who goes way back to the Neil Nike Days. Hennessee, who apparently is set to run for some public office or other, currently sits as chair of the Portland Development Commission, whose main function appears to be to siphon money from taxpayers over to the Gerdling/Edlen Development group, all in the name of the condo-ization of Portland. Now he'll get to oversee a big state pork barrel to go with his municipal one.

Rounding out this gallery was Dale Penn, the former Marion County district attorney, who's going to be a director of the scandal-prone Oregon Lottery Commission. It's ironic that he should be ascending to this position the same week in which both The Portland Tribune and the Willamette Week have called him out once again for the apparently bogus prosecution in the "unsolved mystery" case of the murder of former Corrections Director Michael Francke back in the Goldschmidt Salad Days. Penn is the last person on earth who, with a straight face, is still insisting that Frank Gable, the drug-dealing thug who's doing time for the murder, actually did the killing. I wonder what new fantasies he'll indulge in over on the Lottery board.

Governor Ted, you don't get out enough. There are plenty of great Democrats out there who aren't tainted by the bad old days. If you really want to clean up messes like Saif and the Lottery, and prevent Tri-Met from becoming another one, you really need to find some new blood.

1. Which Portland-area nonprofit social service agency paid its chief officer compensation of $533,278, plus benefits, last year?

2. Which Portland-area nonprofit social service agency saw its chief officer receive annual compensation of $785,446 last year?

3. Where will I no longer take used household items for donation?

The answer is here.