As Patrick said, today’s been a completely normal day at the Mercury.

Matt Staab, chemistry teacher at Cleveland High School, brought his “Explosives ‘Kit’” to show us a few DIY (and a few don’t try ‘em at home) fire balls and bangs and volcanic diet coke tricks.

These are elemental salts, on fire, producing a rainbow of colors:

Oooo, pretty. Staab gave me some notes, and the ones for this experiment say:

quantum mechanics. e- drops back to lower energy light emitted (photon/wave)

Check out more explosions, plus a few tips on where to procure the necessary ingredients for “exploding acetylene balloons,” in the July 3 issue!

Here’s a little inside scoop about what it’s like to work at the Mercury!

Today started off with a little editors meeting, where we talked about our Fourth of July issue and lauughed and lauughed. I don’t want give too many spoilers here, but you can expect patriotism, ass-kicking food, and an all American salute to explosions. This issue is not intended for pussies or crybabies.

Next, we went outside, where a chemistry professor was lighting shit on fire in our parking lot. We lauuughed and lauuughed.

Then, Terry Lynn Link, the creator of Tails of Abbygail showed up to say hello and bring us some posters! I got the one of Champ! She was very nice. As she was leaving she told me, “You guys are actually pretty cool down here, and you can quote me on that.” She then hopped on her custom motorcycle, laid down some rubber in a cloud of smoke and blazed off.

Next a bunch of us went to get ice cream for a review I’m writing, where I realized, “Hey, I’m getting paid to eat ice cream!” I lauuughed and lauuughed.

To top it off, we’re all going down to the mall this afternoon to get glamour shots! And we’ll lauuugh and lauuugh.

You are sooooo jealous. You know you are.

World of Warcraft players will remember the hit “I am Murloc” as the tongue-in-cheek tribute to the beloved race of fish-people by Blizzard Entertainment’s house band, Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain. The thrash metal-style song debuted to delighted attendees at Blizzard Entertainment’s BlizzCon™ 2005 gaming convention in Anaheim, CA.

Oh, man. Awkward.

In today’s Mercury there’s a story I wrote about Can’t Stop the Serenity, an annual worldwide benefit organized by fans of Joss Whedon’s TV show Firefly and its spin-off movie, Serenity. Basically, it works like this: Fans show Serenity in movie theaters and charge admission, and the proceeds are then donated to gender equality group Equality Now.

I’ve attended the event since it was founded in Portland in 2006, and I’m looking forward to this weekend’s screenings. But that said: Whoa. Somebody fucked up. A couple of people fucked up, actually, and they fucked up pretty bad.

Turns out that two of the cities that participated in last year’s Can’t Stop the Serenity screenings failed to actually, you know, hand over the money they earned. Equality Now has reported that they never saw the funds from the 2007 events held in Denver and Dallas/North Texas, which ostensibly raised a combined total of $7,500. Portland blogger the One True b!X, who founded Can’t Stop the Serenity, broke the news on his blog today.

In the case of Denver, the person ultimately responsible for the estimated $1,900 raised… has since disappeared and reportedly become completely incommunicado. That money, as near as anyone can tell, simply is gone forever, although no one knows why. Equality Now reports having no record of those funds.

In the case of Dallas/North Texas, the roughly $5,600 raised wound up in the account of the lead organizer there and got “lost”. He currently is under a signed agreement to make monthly payments over the next two years to Equality Now.

The fact that these two cities had “missing” funds has been known for some time—at least since February, in fact….

B!X also notes that in the Can’t Stop the Serenity community, there’s been some debate over whether, and when, to come out with this information:

While this year’s organizers in both cities on Wednesday posted a statement to other CSTS [Can’t Stop the Serenity] organizers, the global coordinator (and some other local organizers) requested that those statements and the facts they contain not be made public. I disagreed with the notion of a delay, as I have for some time now.

The event-going public has the right to know what happened. There is no ethically-defensible way in which to withhold the fact that someone’s money did not go where it was supposed to, while asking them to give more money again this year.

I just got off the phone with Anna Snyder, one of the organizers of this year’s Portland screenings. “We really haven’t decided on our position on this,” Snyder said. “Obviously we’re talking about it. We’re taking it very seriously.” I asked Snyder if Portland’s screenings had ever had any problems with getting their money to the people at Equality Now. “No!” she answered. “Not at all. Ever.”

Portland’s Can’t Stop the Serenity events will proceed as planned. “We’re hoping that people realize that it was just two cities out of 40-plus [cities],” Snyder says. “It’s not the norm. I’m hoping people will realize that it’s just two cities. We expect people to still come out and still support Equality Now and support what we’re doing.”

Whedon fans and Can’t Stop the Serenity participants and volunteers are talking about the issue over at Whedon nerd hangout Whedonesque. The full blog post by b!X on the matter can be found here.

UPDATE. Local writer and cartoonist Mike Russell—who has volunteered with Portland’s Can’t Stop the Serenity event in the past, and who tipped me off about b!X’s post—summed up the situation pretty well, describing it to me as “embarrassing and appalling.” “Each city’s screenings are separately organized and run,” Russell wrote on his blog, CulturePulp, “and Portland’s effort has always been (A) the biggest earner nationwide and (B) completely transparent and reliable, to the best of my knowledge.”

Shockingly this morning, I drew a blank when telling the Mercury’s editorial staff I was interested in writing about the history of Portland’s rent boy scene. “What’s a rent boy?” people asked.

Rent boy=”hustler”, “working boy”, “trade”, “call-boy.” Then there’s “gay for pay” or “rough trade,” just hit up Wikipedia. Given Portland’s reputation as one of the world’s rent boy capitals, after Amsterdam and Manchester, I was amazed nobody had heard the term before. So, what did River Phoenix play in My Own Private Idaho? A “male prostitute,” I was told.
PHOENIX: RENT BOY!

If there’s an American term, I’d like to hear it.

Every once in awhile, someone throws me a bone here for all the work I do. Like, for instance, I got a free pair of shoes from office manager Brad Buckner. And I get free Stumptown Coffee every time I come to work. But finally, after four tireless months here, I got up to the “gold star level” which gets me the free tickets that nobody else wants. Tonight, this is what I get:

If you don’t know what that is (wtf is wrong with you?) that’s a photo of High School Musical in Concert. And I’m going tonight.

I have no clue if I’m excited about this. I’m so knee-deep in post-meta irony, I really can’t even read my own feelings regarding this.

There will be a blog post on it tomorrow, unless there are so many negative comments that I’m forced to stay home and cry.

I just want to remind everyone that we are in the market for an arts intern (that sounds creepy, doesn’t it? Well, so do the noises I hear coming from the newsroom sometimes). We need someone from approx June-August who can commit 15-20 hours a week to help us with all the things we need help with. (See this post for more details.) So, if you know any English majors who think the world owes them a living, send ‘em our way and we’ll beat the notion out of them.

Email resumes, clips, enthusiasm, and cute cat YouTubes to ahallett@portlandmercury.com

Our beloved Unpaid Intern will be moving on to greener (hopefully paid) pastures at the end of the month—which means we’re looking for a fresh young overqualified face to subject themselves to three months of drudgery and self-loathing here at Mercury HQ. (Hey, at least you get to leave after three months! Ha ha. Ha.)

We’re seeking an arts intern who can commit to 15-20 hours a week, Mon-Wed. Most office hours will be spent doing thankless bitch work such entering data into our online film and music calendars, picking up Marjorie’s dry-cleaning, updating our restaurant database, transcribing Ezra’s music interviews into some approximation of coherent adult speech, making Erik peanut butter and honey sandwiches, and writing the occasional blog post; there will also be opportunities to write short film and music reviews.

The internship itself is unpaid, but you’ll be paid (a pittance!) for anything we publish—mostly, it’s a great way to get your foot in the door and get some published clips in the ol’ portfolio.

Please e-mail resumes to ahallett@portlandmercury.com (include writing samples if you have them, or write a really kick-ass cover letter. Also let us know what kind of arts stuff interests you most—music, fashion, film, books, etc.)

MERCURY INTERNSHIPS: The Toughest Job You’ll Ever Not Get Paid For.

Blogtownies, help. Our office palm is turning yellow. It’s a “Cat Palm.” What should I do?! I can’t bear the thought of it dying…

PLANT: Weird…frightening…dangerous…

This Thursday, in addition to Flutter’s Anniversary down the street, Phlox is having an art opening for Casey Burns, whose work has been used for everything from concert posters for bands like Sonic Youth and Sleater Kinney (among many, many others) to, well, covers of the Mercury.

In addition to the art and wine, enjoy 15% off regularly priced merchandise, including threads from one of my favorite brands for t-shirts, 3 Dots, from 6-9 pm.

Regular readers of Blogtown already know we devote every Friday to the subject of “cats” and all the cute and wonderful things they do. HOWEVER! Just as wonderful (though maybe not as cute) is the Iron Man movie opening today across the nation, which we go ga-ga about in this week’s paper, here and more amusingly here. When I brought up the idea that we should devote today’s blog postings to Iron Man, the poop really hit the fan! “BUT FRIDAY IS CAT DAY!” they mewled. However, after 90 minutes of vehement argument, we decided to spend all day paying tribute to both very worthy topics. (Sorry “News” lovers, you’re just going to have to suck it.)

So welcome to Blogtown, where today we’re all about “Cats” and “Iron Man”!

Thanx for the picz, Monet! LOL!