Steve Wiecking, an editor at the Weekly, oversees the paper's fashion issues, and as a result he sometimes gets free cosmetics in the mail. Today, as he was giving them away, I came up with a phrase: schwagon, as in "When you start receiving free shit in the mail that you didn't even ask for or necessarily want, you are officially on the schwagon." Tell your friends.

As a former old-time-radio obsessive, I have read about and heard (in snippets on some audio documentary) the one-time legendary Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York responding to a newspaper strike by reading the Sunday funnies over the air. This is sort of similar: a

Shit hits fan. We shall see what this means, but I can't imagine much good will come of it. Ugh.

The Crazy Frog "Axel F" single is every bit as good as some of my friends have been telling me. OMG. The "Club Mix" even has an electro-breakdown in the middle; it might be even better than the "Radio Edit." This record is so stupid it's a miracle; it is so gonna make my top ten. UPDATE: Wow, the album--I thought the single was shameless!

This week, if you pick up a copy of Seattle Weekly, you will find a short blurb about Bumbershoot with my byline on it. Iggy and the Stooges are now headlining, with Mudhoney opening; Elvis Costello's headlining too, after Devo's and Ani DiFranco's cancellations. Unfortunately, the blurb misidentifies the band as . . . Iggy and the Three Stooges! The error was made after I'd turned in my copy, and has been corrected online. Pretty bad, but still, it did result in Andy McCarty, the Weekly's IT director, creating this visual analogue:

BTW--the jaw's been good again for awhile now--thanks to the folks who asked about it.

Tonight my coworker Steve Wiecking organized a really great, fun reading at Bus Stop, a newish local bar where he and four others read excerpts from trashy celebrity autiobiographies. Lots of instant-classic moments throughout: Steve, who read from Joan Crawford's memoir, putting an arm straight up in the air as Crawford discussed the virtues of being stopped by fans in public and throwing out a clenched-teeth-chatty "How ya doin'!" Nick Garrison deadpanning Elizabeth Taylor's back-cover blurb for Maureen Stapleton's autobio and portions from Shirley MacLaine's Dance While You Can that sniped oh-so-politely at her Postcards From the Edge costar Meryl Streep's isolationist (so sez MacLaine) acting technique. Patrick Baroch seemed a bit stiff at first, which was a trick--reading the portion of Mia Farrow's autobio about the Woody Allen/Soon-Yi Previn affair, he turned in the evening's most-repeated portion, variations on the phrase: "He fucked Soon-Yi!" The most inspired performance was Sarah Rudinoff's, of the Janice Dickinson book, which I must track down immediately--there were more stop-you-in-your-tracks lines in her 20 minutes than most writers come up with in a lifetime. (Indisputable highlight, based on Dickerson's becoming aroused: "My flower opened up and barked.") Neal Schindler and I gave her a standing O, and we weren't the only ones.

Neal, Kate Silver, and I then headed over to Broadway in search of food; after considering Dick's drive-in (the greasiest cheapo cheeseburgers in the world, a cross between McDonald's and White Castle, only very, very local--a Seattle institution, with good reason I think; they satisfy a junky junk-food craving like nothing else on earth) and finding most everything else closed, we settled on Jai Thai. I was the only one really hungry--Kate shared two appetizers, Neal left everything alone, and I ate some apps and a chicken curry dish--but that soon became beside the point when we were drawn to the back room, where karaoke was taking place. Karaoke, I've come to realize, works best in two ways: One, as something a ton of friends plan for and attend together, and two, as something you accidentally happen upon and then join in with. Kate did Split Enz's "I Got You," I performed Gretchen Wilson's "Redneck Woman," and I don't think Neal did anything. Fun enough on its own, but (a) this one mid-30s (older, maybe?) dude (seemed Indian but I might have that wrong) got up and wailed on "Billie Jean," dancing a la the video, totally into it, just killed; (b) the fellow manning the controls (youngish, African-American, dyed blonde) was as much fun as any of the clientele, and probably more than most; and (c) the book was, like, a foot thick. Nearly everything I or Kate could think to want to sing was in it; it must have at least 3,000 songs. I'm no one's idea of a karaoke specialist (though I have seen the Huey Lewis-Gwyneth Paltrwo vehicle Duets, not that I'd suggest anyone with a low tolerance for things like the Steve Wiecking reading detailed above), but that book is the most thorough I've never seen. It put the book from Staraoke, thrice weekly at Minneapolis's Grumpy's, to shame, and that's a great book. I think I've found a new second (or third, or fourth) home.