"[T]he MAC to me is a place where you have to have high esteem, because not everyone is going to like you."

Good news for art lovers -- Edvard Munch's famous painting "The Scream" has been recovered after having been stolen for several months.

It will now be returned to its permanent home, in the Lair Hill neighborhood in Portland.

The O has a story this morning about proposed changes in the area between the South Park Blocks and the North Park Blocks. This was originally a major Goldschmidt Scam Zone, with talk of the city buying up many of the old buildings (owned by the Usual Suspects) and tearing them down for parks. "It will be like Barcelona!" Uh huh.

When that idea eventually bombed out in the post-Neil world, Vera talked about making changes along the streets to make them more Euro. I believe they held a press party in front of the old Brasserie to announce the plan. Another snoozer.

The latest talk is much more sensible. In addition to the new park going in over Moyer's Underground Garage (which admittedly has a scam odor to it), some modest upgrades are being planned for existing park properties. Gosh, the city actually spending money to make improvements to classic Portland parks? How novel.

Before I get too far down the road rebuilding this blog, I'm going to have to mess around with "Mr. Template," as Cousin Jim calls it. I can't bear this basic blue for long. Don't look for your favorite old (or even recent) posts until the framework is remodeled.

Oh, and if things go haywire, don't call the FBI this time. It's probably just me. When you mess with Mr. Template, anything can happen, and usually does.

While I am sitting here in internet hell, my buddy Mike down in the Bay Area is out getting ready for his 15 minutes. Mike's a big 49er football fan -- season ticketholder for years -- and he's been selected to compete in a football throwing accuracy contest at halftime of the team's last exhibition game of the year, at Candlestick Park Friday night. If he makes the cut this time, he'll come back in December to compete with winners from other home games for the grand prize -- a Hummer!

The contestants will be given 10 balls each to throw into the back of a stationary Hummer from a distance of 15 yards. They each get only 30 seconds to see how many they can land.

Mike has no use for a Hummer, of course, but he figures if he wins he can sell it. He's been practicing so much the last couple of days, his arm is getting sore. He hasn't touched a football in years before this. I hope he doesn't resort to illegal steroids!

If he wins on Friday, we'll know what he's up to all throughout the fall months.

Imagine waking up to find that four years of your writing has been lost, probably irretrievably. That’s what the company that has been hosting this blog told me earlier today. My recent experiences with that company warned me that something bad might happen, but I never stopped to consider that it might be this bad. They are claiming that they were hacked, but given my recent experiences with them, I can’t believe anything they say.

So what does it all mean?

Well, I’ve got a new web host – something that I should have done long ago. I have upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type software. And from here on out, I’ll be backing up everything to a different server, hosted by a different company, about every week or so.

It will take a while to get the blog looking the way I want it again. And without all those archives, my traffic will go way down, unless and until I can somehow figure out a way to recreate them. It is going to hurt like hell.

But hey, we soldier on. I’m still alive, and still as full of opinions and ideas as I was when I started this thing more than four years ago. And that’s what’s really important, I guess.

Sheesh.

The Oregonian pretty much missed the story on last week's historic Portland City Council vote to deny permission for a super-sized condo tower in the Goose Hollow neighborhood. Commissioner Randy Leonard said the City Council dialogue and decision were "the most important discussion on development the council has held in decades." The Trib was all over it, and I'm told the Northwest Examiner was too. But the O reported the council action in a fairly anemic piece on page B2.

Why was that?

It's because the O had handed the story off to Randy Gragg, its resident "architecture critic" (or whatever he's supposed to be), and he had made his usual hash of it in the InPortland insert the week before. Once a story gets Gragged, the O goes into a stoned trance about it for quite some time before it enlists actual reporters to come back in and stitch together what really happened.

Gragg's piece on the Goose Hollow proposal is a classic illustration of his modus operandi. The basic premise is always that high-rise development throughout Portland is inevitable -- a force of nature, almost -- and it's always a given that it's a good thing. "Building big sculpts a new urban skyline" was the headline of the latest piece. There's no debate to be had about it, folks -- it's a done deal.

If there is any discussion of the legal issues surrounding a development, it's always buried far down in the story. In the case of the Goose Hollow tower, the key issue was the transfer of floor area ratios (FAR) from one part of town to another; Gragg saves that for way, way down there, and he spins it, as he always does, the developers' way. His readers rarely get to form an informed opinion about what's really at stake. The architects and developers always know best.

When there's controversy, Gragg never gives the neighbors any respect. He hardly ever names or quotes them, and he inevitably employs a condescending put-down in describing them. In the latest story, the Goose Hollow neighbors are "plucky" -- how cute. Most times, he's even more hostile than that.

Meanwhile, all his developer and architect chums are named prominently, and most of them are quoted reverently. If they stage a little demonstration of support for their money-making schemes, as they recently did at a City Council meeting, you can bet old Gragg will be there to shine a light on it. "'I like height,' founding principal Mark Edlen says." Yeah, Randy, no kidding; he likes money even better.

Recent condo transplants who come to Portland with big bucks and no common sense are always prominently featured as well. This time some poor soul who just paid upwards of half a million to live in an apartment in Portland is talking about how much nicer it is in the Pearl than in Miami. What that has to do with the appropriate height of the buildings is beyond me.

Then there are the comparisons to Seattle and San Francisco. Gragg never lets up with these. As if the only way Portland will "succeed" is by turning itself into one of those two very unlivable places. This time around, our buildings aren't as tall as theirs, and so I guess that means we should make ours taller. Next time, it will be some other trait for comparison. We'll never be good enough.

When a story gets Gragged, the developers and their beret-and-baseball-cap architect cronies are all happy. I'm sure Gragg gets a lot of free wine and cheese out of it from his pals. But as coverage of local politics, it stinks. The O was a lot better off when this fellow was at Harvard.

This is happening way too often.

The Stennies are having a stroke over last week's Portland City Council vote not to turn the Linnton neighborhood's industrial wasteland into a "town center," presumably like the one in Beaverton. The vote was 3-2, with Opie and Sam the Tram dissenting.

A lot of vocal people out Linnton way worked long and hard to get housing built on the underachieving lots where proud factories once stood. The train was on the track, but it has suddenly been derailed, and Mayor Tom Potter, clearly a driving force in keeping the plan from taking effect, is taking heat for it from the streetcar crowd.

Not from me. The council vote makes a lot of sense. There was a bunch of talk about environmental contamination on the site, but I don't think that that was what this was really about. It seems to me that the council was simply weighing industrial "sanctuary" vs. more condos, and it came out in favor of keeping the land dedicated to potential middle-class jobs. Sure, the neighbors are frustrated, but welcome to the club. Who ever said that the neighbors dictate planning around here? Ask the folks in Buckman, and many other neighborhoods, about that.

What's funny to me are that the "progressive" voices crying out for pure democracy in this instance are the same ones who'll tell you the public can't be trusted on matters such as taxpayer financing of political campaigns and public power. In the latter cases, the City Council knows best. But when Erik and Sam and their real estate johns have the neighborhood association types going their way, then you have to give The People what they want, or else it's the end of civilization as we know it.

That's not how it works around here. Keep going, Mayor Potter. This was another right vote in your column.

Somebody's getting ready to release a new biography of Bruce Springsteen and his bandmates.

Better save some room at the end for this.

Dear Sister Patricia Cruise, SC,

Today I got my copy of your recent mass mailing asking me for a money donation to Covenant House. I must admit, your pitch that "[e]vil predators are out there robbing kids of their innocence and making them do unthinkable things" sure pulled at my heartstrings. But I'm afraid that I can't, as you ask, "help me rescue them."

You see, the weaselly marketers that you hired to put together your fundraising spiel decided it would be a good idea to enclose a metal object in the envelope to make sure that I did not shred your junk mail without reading it. I've gotten these shredder-wreckers before, and I've recently blogged about them. They purport to be objects of a sacred nature, meant to appeal to my presumed religious fervor, but their real intent is to teach a lesson to anyone who would shred your appeal without first opening it to remove the metal. In this case, it purported to be a cross necklace. Although you may be too other-worldly to realize this, I can see it for the money-grubbing device that it really is:

And so, Sister Patricia, even if you really exist, you may not want to stay up late at the convent waiting for my check to arrive. Groups that stoop this low don't get charity from me, and I hope my readers don't give them any money, either. Best wishes for your success in saving the children from those predators, though.

God Bless you, too.

Cordially,
Jack Bogdanski

Guitar afficionados, have you seen funtwo yet?

A reader sends along this anecdote:

The IRS decides to audit Ralph, and summons him to the IRS office. The IRS auditor is not surprised when Ralph shows up with his attorney.

The auditor says, "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Ralph. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."

Ralph says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."

The auditor thinks a moment and says, "No way! It's a bet."

Ralph removes his glass eye and bites it.

The auditor's jaw drops. Ralph says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."

The auditor can tell Ralph isn't blind, so he takes the bet.

Ralph removes his dentures and bites his good eye.

The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Ralph's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" Ralph asks. "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this guy can manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

Ralph stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can't make the stream reach the wastebasket on other side, so he pretty much urinates all over the desk.

The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Ralph's attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.

"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Ralph told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over an IRS official's desk and that you'd be happy about it."

"Stupid people with money are everywhere."

-- Unnamed resident of north fork of Long Island, on recent changes to her neck of the woods, as told to Sarah Hepola, in Southwest Spirit magazine.

What would you get if The Oregonian made a concerted effort to compete for the readers and advertisers of Portland Monthly?

We found out inside yesterday's paper: You'd get something truly, truly awful.

It's a bimonthly magazine called "Ultimate" -- "ultimate" as in "last," perhaps. As in, last thing you would want to waste two minutes on.

They've really outdone themselves this time. Dig it out of the recycling and save it, people. It is a genuine collector's item. One hundred eight glossy pages of dead tree and color ink, wasted.

LeLo found them for us: cheerleaders!

The engineers say the possibility of a midair stall is remote. So remote, they prefer we don't talk about it. But, if it happens, you don't want to be up there unless you can grow wings or you don't mind a little rope burn.

If it stalls, the tram's driver opens the door, hangs a rope from the frame out of the car and tosses it to firefighters on the ground. They climb up into the car by rope and help the passengers down one by one in a harness.

Remember, this is coming from the people who told you it would cost only $15 million to build.

And how much are we spending to train the firefighters for this one? Or are we just going to show them a video? (Image by Portland Freelancer.)

Another shooting spree downtown last night. And now we have mobs of armed teenagers throwing rocks at cops and trashing cars.

Hey, Chief Potter, when are we going to admit we have a crisis on our hands here and start doing something other than business as usual at the Police Bureau?

We're too busy with streetcars and real estate scams, I guess. But hey, when you get hit by a stray bullet, you will soon be able to send the cops a free e-mail for help via the city's wi-fi cloud! Maybe Flexcar could get into the ambulance business...

I ran a couple of errands at the Meier & Frank store at Lloyd Center [bang bang] this afternoon. The signs of the changeover from M&F to Macy's were all over the place. Over the door that faces the ice rink, the raised letters proclaiming the store's name are gone, their old resting place covered by a canvas banner with Meier & Frank hastily stencilled across. Soon the new name of Macy's will appear.

Inside the store, I used my new Macy's card for the first time. It worked. The salesperson advised me that if I had any questions about The Transition, I could go onto the website noted at the bottom of my sales receipt. "Are they keeping you?" I asked with a smile. "Yes, they're keeping everybody," she replied, beaming. Cute kid.

When I got home, I cut up my old M&F card, and I thought that maybe I'd post something about today's experience. After a minute's reflection, I decided against it. "Nothing new there," I told myself. "The switch is old news. Everybody knows what's happening."

But later, when I sat down for a minute with my Saturday New York Times, I had another think coming. The darn story was front-page news.

"It would be as bad as watching Ann Coulter giving a lap dance to Karl Rove. Just so very, very wrong."

"The wind shifted." Sure. (Via The Corvallist.)

This is going to backfire big time on CBS. A real spirit of public service, and especially great for the kids to watch.

"When we need $35m for the tram, the City can find it. But When we need another residential de-tox bed, where is the money for that?"

One of these days, I've got to shake the hand of this fellow Larry Norton down in Old Town. He's doing a great job covering the continuing saga of the Portland Saturday Market move.

Because that's where this guy needs to go for a good long while

They're out there tonight -- thousands and thousands of crazy runners and walkers carrying their team's baton (actually, a wristband, the last time I checked) in the Hood to Coast Relay. Those who take on the full 197-mile course start at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood and make their way to the Turnaround in Seaside in teams of 12 over roughly 24 hours. When they're not running or walking, they're cruising in one their team's two vans, or huddled in a sleeping bag trying to catch something that vaguely resembles sleep.

In my more serious running days, I ran six Hood to Coasts -- including one in which I held the dubious honor of being the very last runner or walker in the entire event for almost all five miles of my first leg (you run three). Those medals constitute the second most ambitious athletic accomplishment I can boast about -- and surprisingly, my marathons (boy, that goes way back) aren't that far ahead of it. I learned, "Train for a marathon, then run Hood to Coast."

Media coverage of the race is completely routine. Friday, "they're off." Saturday, "they're on their way," and then "finishing up and starting the big party." Sunday, "the winners, and a few color stories along the road." Same thing every year.

This time, though, there's a real twist. The man behind the 25 years of this madness has had some serious medical problems lately, and he's starting to hand off, as it were, to his daughter, who will succeed him in operating the event.

Hats off to that guy. It's a fantastic experience, and an amazing logistical feat on the part of him and his crew. And so I hope that on the road tonight, under all the stars that you can see, underneath the reflective vest, with the team bracelet on the wrist and tiny flashlight in hand, every participant takes a minute to send good thoughts Bob Foote's way.

UPDATE, 1:43 a.m.: Here's a live blog by a Hood to Coast team from out on the course.

The funniest stories are the true ones. (Via Ancientpelican.com.)

When the customer asks you a question relating to a problem with the goods and services you provide, say, "I have no idea."

... would hit a 7-year-old boy on a bike with a car, and drive away?

Welcome to Blog reports -- twice -- on close encounters of the buffalo kind.

You know what? There's real progress being made with the Portland Development Commission.

Now if the mayor could just kick a little tushie over at the Planning Bureau...

Bush isn't senile, or drug addled. He's a lying a**hole. And it's hard work. Only truly gifted and intelligent sociopaths like Rove and Cheney can rattle it off. Bush can't.