Aside from the dog/car wash, Devil's Point is hosting a series of events. Come for the car wash, stay for the.. um... entertainment.

DAY TIME EVENTS SCHEDULE:
Bikini Car Wash: 2pm-7pm
Dog Wash: 2pm-7pm
Car Cruise-In: 2pm-7pm
Island Style Bento BBQ: 2pm-7pm

NIGHT TIME EVENTS SCHEDULE:
Exotic Dancers: 9pm-Close
Fire Dancers: 9pm-Close
Live Music by BAND OF DIOS
(featuring members of Western Aerial and Tri-Polar) - 10pm-11pm

C'mon. It's for a good cause. Are you going to tell this poor puppy you don't like exotic dancers enough too help him? Hmmm? Of course not.

Don't be sad. We had a good run. All summer romances must end. Besides, every time I smell a mojito, I will think of you and the blog love we created together. So, wipe that tear from your eye. We still have one more weekend.

This being the last hurrah of summer, I've decided to gather the best of the Summer Boozy Goodness drink recipes.

These should keep you going for awhile. And look for Autumn Boozy Goodness arriving on Blogtown soon.

Shannen Doherty refuses to admit she once punched Jenny Garth in the face. Quit being such a bitch, Shannen!!

On Sunday, tune to AMC at 5 pm for a Mad Men Marathon: five episodes of the already awesome season two! (You can also catch up with all the Project Runway episodes you've missed starting Monday at 3 pm, on Bravo!)

Since I won't be around to remind you, season two of Gossip Girl debuts on the CW, Monday, 8 pm! I will try this show ONE MORE TIME to find out if I still don't give a crap.

"Source Confirms: Jennifer Aniston to Guest on 30 Rock!" Omigod, OMIGOD.... I DON'T CARE!!

And while the rest of you were watching Barack Obama giving a life-altering speech, Stephen Colbert was doing whippits... live on air.

This week's cover image was provided by resident Portland photographer John Ryan Brubaker. I ran across John's photography as I was floating through the Mercury's Flickr Pool. The cover image is part of John's diligent, and inspiring Polaroid 366 project, in which he is out to take one Polaroid a day for a year. Just the daunting task of keeping motivated to shoot a photo every day of the week is a big undertaking, but combined with the recent news that Polaroid has made the decision to stop making Polaroid film this year, the project seems to inherit an instamatic form of nostalgia.

See more of John's work at pixelgrain.com.

The vote wasn't a surprise - Gonzalez was the only candidate with a lot of experience who agreed with the school board's controversial policies (like the district's transfer policy). But check out PPS Equity's take on the appointment meeting:

When approving the process for appointing a new member, the vote was 5-1. Sonja Henning voted "no," but during board discussion of the issue, she deferred. "I don't need to say it here," she said.

After the meeting adjourned and the cameras and microphones were turned off, two of her board colleagues joined her for a discussion that greatly exceeded the length of the official board meeting.

Doesn't the public have a right to know why she voted?? Isn't public deliberation a fundamental piece of the democratic process?

The Board wound up unanimously voting to approve Gonzalez - but the lack of any discussion in public does make you wonder what sorts of concerns and ideas are being vetted in the back room rather than in front of the mics.

I've left messages for Sonja to ask why she decided to keep her dissenting thoughts off the record. But it's the Friday before a three day weekend, so who knows when we'll hear back. If ever.

NEW DOUGHNUT: GREEN...AND YELLOW...

STEVE: "Is it something to do with drugs?"

NED: "I don't want my face on the blog..."

There is virtually nothing going on theater-wise right now. Some comedy shows, a touring production of The Phatom of the Opera... see our theater listings for a complete roundup of your paltry options. (Pylon is your best bet.)

Here's a question. The theater scene is so desperately dead in the summer that I will essentially cover anything. Anything! Shakespeare in the park? Musical theater in Tigard? Sketch comedy in your mom's basement? All the major companies hit the snooze button in the summer, but I still have an arts section to fill--as does every other paper in town. Instead of going up against Third Rail, PCS, Vertigo, and Artist's Rep in the fall, why don't smaller companies take advantage of the lull and produce work in the off season? It would almost guarantee more press attention than they're likely to get otherwise.

And then, of course, the city lurches to life in the full-on clusterfuck that is next weekend. Hey, Artist's Rep? Though I'd very much like to, I can't go to the opening night of Blackbird, because I'm seeing Reggie Watts and Antony and the Johnsons at TBA that night. Ditto MusicFest NW. It's great to have options, but it's really frustrating that two of the biggest annual festivals our city has to offer overlap. (Why not just throw Wordstock in there too, while we're at it?)

It's particularly frustrating because most people I know are going to default to seeing the same stale bands at MusicFest rather than taking a chance on what TBA has to offer. For example: I had trouble convincing a friend that he should see Reggie Watts at TBA instead of Built to Spill at MusicFest, even though he admitted that he's seen Built to Spill approximately 47 times, as has just about everyone who's lived here for any length of time. A brand new show from a frighteningly talented, hyper-intelligent, Andy Kaufman Comedy Award-winning performance artist, or a chance to hear a band that peaked 11 years ago perform an album you've got memorized anyway? I like Perfect from Now On too, but not as much as I like challenging, thought-provoking performances I can actually connect with.

I hate to impose this kind of arbitrary MusicFest/TBA dichotomy: It shouldn't have to be an either/or, but unfortunately, due to scheduling, it is. And that sucks.

"We wouldn't put a two year county commissioner of Multnomah County a single heartbeat away from the presidency, especially when you consider that John McCain is twenty three years older than the State of Alaska."

This means one of two things:
1. The movie's a big, honking turd.
2. The film is an indisputable masterpiece and, as such, any critical reaction to it is irrelevant.

Which could it be? Our intrepid Kiala Kazebee skipped Obama's speech at the DNC last night to watch Disaster Movie, so you can find out the answer in our web-exclusive review.

Despite all the rumors about his bizarre personal life, the man is the undisputed King of Pop... and for very good reason. Let's take a look at the musical genius at work in perhaps his finest hour:

Oh god. No, that didn't work. Now I just feel dirty. Is there some way to cleanse the pain?

Okay. I feel slightly better.

So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.

So, by the end of the speech, I was ready to follow him to the ends of the earth... that is until they played THIS as his exit music! (Please, just watch the first minute or so.)

WTF?!?

Why in the hell would you end one of the greatest speeches since Martin Luther King Jr. with hillbilly music? After a beautiful, rousing and noncynical oratory like the one he just gave, it's unbelievable to me that the Committee would choose such a pandering country-fried song like Brooks and Dunn's "Only in America". And even worse? It's apparently THE SAME SONG Bush used for his campaign theme song in 2004!

Seriously, it was like making love to a beautiful woman, and then watching her take her dentures out.

Was anyone else as freaked out about this as I was?

Excalibur Comics (2444 SE Hawthorne) is once again having their big 50 percent off sale. The sale starts today and runs through Monday, September 1.

I've hit more than my fair share of these since I moved to Portland six years ago, and I have yet to be disappointed with what I've ended up tracking down. This is an excellent opportunity to go and pick up a ton of back issues on the cheap. Do not waste it.

But hey! She's got an 18-year-old about to head to Iraq, and an infant with down syndrome. The country's inane Christian soccer and hockey moms will LOVE her.

She says the "right reasons" for running for office are "to challenge the status quo and work for the common good." She delivered that trite line in a broken staccato.

It's going to be a long two months until November 4.

Coleman spent his last two years of high school in Alaska, where apparently the pregnancy rate is through the ceiling, so he is qualified to have an opinion here. We have concluded that Palin's nomination simply must be a joke, but here are our thoughts, as they occur to us. Feel free to add yours...

1.She has no executive experience.
2.Although she is very fertile.
3.She can't speak.
4.She sounds stupid.
5."A ship in harbor is safe. But that's not why the ship is built."
6.Hockey mom.
7.She's quoting senators from Ohio...
8.She sounds like she would rip your face off if you asked when her life started.
9.Joe Biden will "take this chick to the mat," says Coleman.
10.The crowd is cheering "USA...USA..."

PALIN: Miss Wasilla, 1984...

11.It just seems so desperate....
12.Seriously.
13.She's praising Hillary Clinton now. Oh my gosh.
14.The Republicans are expecting women to vote for them based on gender issues?!
15.The internets reveal she is considered Alaska's "GILF." The G is for "governor."
16.I am feeling guilty about this post. Especially the sexist bits, and that comment about Michael Palin being "spastic." Who knew. I'm sorry.
17.I'm over it now.
18.Now really: Why?
19.WHYY?!

Also, I am pretty sure I have found paradise:

Tips to Videogum!

McCain picked a running mate! The female governor of Alaska Sarah Palin, a pro-life, deeply Christian, hockey mom reformer. Everyone has an opinion.

Obama gave a down-to-earth speech that 50 billion news agencies describe as "adding policy to soaring rhetoric" despite the stadium setting. No bands, no airplanes, but maybe a new slogan: Enough! Is that because the "change message" has "run out of steam"?

Abortion: Still Legal in Mexico City. phew.

Judgment Day: Bosnian Serb genocide suspect and runaway Karadzic refuses to enter a plea to the UN War Crimes tribunal (in his words, the "NATO court").

Predicting the Future: Don't worry, says Oregon economist, the recession is totally sort of almost over.

And in wonk news, the PDC has a new chair who says he's into transparency and not being "done" with downtown.

This week in the pool we saw...

1) A potential candidate for an upcoming Mercury cover.

2) Stranger Danger!

3) An impromptu Pizzazz! audition rehearsal.

Lauding Portland's police officers--they're "among the most professional, creative, and progressive police officers employed by any city in the United States"--Leonard writes that their success in lowering the crime rate is "despite a City and County criminal justice system that is strained by shrinking County resources, poor coordination, and redundancy... in a fractured criminal justice system."

"I have prepared a snapshot of the state of the Portland Police Bureau and a series of recommendations designed to deliver a sustainable framework to ensure that front line officers receive the support they need to do their jobs," Leonard writes.

The quick take on the 16 page report: Leonard addresses the problems the bureau has had in fully staffing the department, the "vision" of community policing, which "has been diluted after many years and varying degrees of commitment by subsequent leadership in the Police Bureau," "poor" internal communication that "[results] in a decision making process that lacks street officer input, and an "almost exclusively reactive" media relations and public outreach strategy (he's spot on with this one; we've had next to no luck gaining access to the bureau even when we've pitched all-out puff pieces, like tagging along with the bomb squad to see what that job's like).

Leonard also tackles the issue of "minority community engagement," which he portrays as a currently spotty effort, with advisory councils that have worked for some communities, and have "dissolved" in the case of the Latino Advisory Council. As for racial profiling: "Over years of discussion, little progress has been made in establishing common ground between the two sides on this issue." Leonard notes that while not everyone agrees that racial profiling exists, "even the perception of racial profiling is a problem for the City," and the bureau needs to tackle it.

On drier topics like the budget, Leonard writes that the process of crafting a budget is insular, and "involves a limited amount of input from either the community or front line staff from within the bureau." Also, he notes that "the leadership of the organization" gives the budget development and implementation short shrift, which is ineffective for a $153 million budget ("This is in part due to the tradition of Police Bureau leadership emerging from the ranks with little or no formal exposure to public budgeting," he notes). There are "fiefdoms" that make it difficult to shift resources within the bureau even as needs change throughout the city--causing units like the Drug and Vice squad to lack the resources they need to tackle things like the "burgeoning prostitution problem."

Finally, the coordination between the Portland Police Bureau and the county "is sporadic at best." He cites the Service Coordination Team in Old Town as an example of "excellent coordination" that's "the exception and not the norm." Back to prostitution, Leonard points out that if Multnomah County Judges listened to cops' requests to hold arrested sex workers for one to three days, "they could be separated from and protected from their pimps and then diverted into specific treatment programs to begin the process of breaking down the cycle of prostitution."

Leonard's conclusion is after the jump. Check out the report here, but note that it could change before it's finally finished, once Leonard gets feedback from the mayor and chief--arguably the two who would have the most to say about the report.

I was able to get some info from Sgt. Brian Schmautz, the police spokesperson: "The police bureau was sharing information with the mayor to give a response. I understand he is in the process of doing that. [The chief's] feedback will be wrapped into the mayor's response."

UPDATE at 5:30 pm--Mayor Tom Potter has responded to the assessment, in a letter addressed to Adams. "Overall, I am concerned with the tone and depth of any report that makes such sweeping statements about a number of important issues, including such difficult-to-quantify issues as morale," he writes, before diving into each sub-category of the report. Potter notes that some of Leonard's recommendations "are at odds with the recommendations of the sub-committees that assisted preparing in the report, and that committee notes seem to indicate that certain findings were requested or assumed before any research began."

Potter agrees with some of Leonard's recommendations, and supports hiring a communications position, for example. In other areas, he picks apart Leonard's conclusions. I'm dashing out the door to head up our Obama speech viewing party, but you can check out the full response here.

"Seven cents more a meal is huge," says Nancy Bales, director of development at EcoTrust, who worked last year trying to get the Oregon legislature to pass a bill subsidizing schools state-wide the seven cents to use local foods. The bill "languished in Ways and Means" according to Bales, as no politician could find a place to scrape up the public monies. So EcoTrust went the private route and got a grant from Kaiser Permanente to start the program just in Portland and Gervis schools.

If it works well in Portland, local foods advocates would have more hard data to sell politicians on the idea of ponying up funds for the whole state. It seems like schools are into the idea of using more local foods - as long as they don't have to foot the bill. An Oregon Dept of Education survey last year showed that nearly a third of Oregon public schools use some local foods and 36 percent of those that don't cited cost as their biggest concern.

The plan is to use the money to incorporate a different local, seasonal food into as many school cafeteria meals as possible. September is the month of cucumbers, October is corn on the cob, November is parsnips, then cabbage, potatoes, pears, berries, radishes and asparagus.

I'm totally into local foods and I think it's a smart idea to try and get big buyers like schools (and prisons, too, would be good) to support local farmers with their dollars rather than buying highly-processed foods trucked from far away. But I don't know if school kids are going to be as excited about Parsnip Month as I am about the economics behind it.

Parsnips: An ugly root vegetable near you!

Bales predicted these fears. Part of the $140,000 in the grant that's not going to reimburse schools for buying the foods will be used for education. "This food's not just going to show up on their plate, there's corresponding information that's going to go home with the kids," said Bales.

To figure out whether the Portland local foods program is working, part of the grant goes toward a "rigorous evaluation" of the program. This could involve more surveys, but also a "plate analysis- someone's job is watching kids eat school lunch and meticulously recording what they throw away. Hopefully it'll be the beef olé rather than the asparagus.

That's the two-disc, limited edition, collectible version of the 10th anniversary DVD of The Big Lebowski, one of my favorite films, and probably one of most peoples' favorite films, actually. The studio sent us over one of these--it boasts a slew of all-new special features, plus individually numbered, bowling ball packaging--and it's currently sitting on my desk, and I'm resisting the selfish urge to just take it home and not tell anybody about it. (Especially since the thing doesn't even come out in stores until September 9--and if having something like this on your shelf before anybody else doesn't give you bragging rights around good ol' Insterstate Lanes, I don't know what will.) But no! Instead, we're gonna do a contest so that one lucky Blogtown reader can take it home. Why? Because I am giving and kind and generous, and don't you ungrateful assholes forget it.

Hit the jump for the details.