Forget billiards. Don't give another toss about darts. Never mind trivia. There's a new bar game in town -- the spelling bee.

On July 2nd, the Night Life Lounge on Clinton is going to hold a spelling contest. It's at 8:00 pm so you know this isn't meant for that pimply kid with headgear whose voice cracks with every other letter. No, this is for adults. More specifically, drunk adults. And that's genius.

"Your word is Pabst."

"Could you use that in a sentence?"

"Sure. I've had way too much Pabst tonight and I think I just read my beer label instead of the word on the card."

"Um...P. B. R?"

I hope they include words that don't surface in other spelling competitions like hefeweizen, jagermeister, and hangover.

Sunday night. I'm in San Francisco for business and my lovely wife has accompanied me. We're hanging out with some friends at The Independent drinking away the minutes before the show starts. We know the names of the two bands and a one sentence description of each, but that's about it. It's just nice to be out late at a show.

First up is the Dead Hensons. This eight-piece band is known for rocking songs from "The Muppet Show," "Sesame Street," and other Jim Henson projects. They start off with the Pinball song (1, 2, 3, 4 5...) and it just keeps getting better. Add the song choices together with banjos, accordions, spoons, washboards, and tap dancing and you have yourself a damn fine show. I make a mental note to time all my future business trips around the Dead Hensons' show schedule.

Following them is a band from Norway who touts themselves as the "world's leading kitchen appliance rock band" -- Hurra Torpedo. A motley trash heap of washers, stoves, freezers, and other appliances fill the stage. As smoke rises from the metal cubes, the trio proceeds to bang the crap out of the appliances as they rip through their song set. They go from a Pixies song to Britney Spears to Frankie Goes to Hollywood to a truly inspired version of "Total Eclipse of the Heart." By the end of the show, the stage is full of scrap metal and sweat.

As we leave, I think how I never would have put these two bands on the same bill together, but somehow, on some strange level, it worked. Muppets and kitchen appliances -- it's the four word description of a great show.

Sometimes I forget how fortunate I am to live so near Powell's City of Books. Since I grew up with it around, I tend to take for granted that there's any book I can imagine in several different editions within arm's reach.

Recently, I found out that John Tenniel (famous for illustrating "Alice in Wonderland") did illustrations for "The Raven." I did some research and couldn't find a collection of the illustrations anywhere. I did have the title, though. So where can an average joe like myself find this elusive artwork? Not surprising, I found out that the actual book is a current resident of the Powell's Rare Books Room (my favorite room).

A quick car ride later and I was holding the 1858 edition of the Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe with Original Memoir in my trembling hands. The illustrations in this gorgeous tome are masterful and the binding is humblingly beautiful. Of course, it's $350 so it's not going to be part of my collection any time soon. I feel fortunate for just having cradled it lovingly if only for a few fleeting moments.

I swear on my Oxford English Dictionary that I will never take Powells for granted again.

We happened to catch Gnarls Barkley's performance of "Crazy" on the MTV Movie Awards. I'm not quite sure why because we weren't watching the awards show and we don't watch MTV all too often. I'm going to chalk it up to serendipity since they performed the song in complete Star Wars costume.


I only wish it was a real band. "Thank you. Give it up for Chewbacca on the skins! And stormtrooper number 1138 on bass guitar. And we can't forget the Imperial String Section! Yeah! I'm Darth Vader. Don't forget to tip your waitress."

Watch some Imperial craziness for yourself. Just don't tell Chewie he needs to practice his drumming. It's not wise to upset a wookie.

On June 25th, people will start running from the World Forestry Center (you know, up by the zoo) and finish on the far side of the Burnside Bridge. In a twist worthy of MXC, at exactly 9:00 a.m. the Burnside bridge will raise. Talk about motivation.

Runners can start as early as they like, but they need to time it right to Beat the Burnside. I'm imagining a bridge slowly folding up as people in Nikes are diving over the increasing divide. It probably won't be that dramatic, but a guy can dream.

It's such a cool idea that it almost makes me want to start running. Although if the bridge raises at 9:00 a.m. the 25th, I probably should get started in the next few minutes.

If all that isn't enough, Portland's own Last Regiment of Syncopated Drummers will be performing at the event. Their beats, alone, make this event worth checking out.

The big buzz around town today is how Phil Knight is going to have a huge 30-acre campus built for Oregon's up-and-coming animation studio: Laika.

I'm sad that the old Will Vinton studio building in NW Portland will no longer be used because that distinctly lowers the chance of me seeing Henry Selick, Neil Gaiman, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Dakota Fanning or any other person involved in Coraline, Laika's latest full-length feature project.

But wait, there's more! Slashdot has an article today about Google's Secretive Data Center that's being built in the Columbia Gorge. The article also mentions Microsoft and Yahoo! building facilities on the Washington side of the Columbia.

I also read today that Netflix is moving its Customer Service center from the Bay Area to Hillsboro.

I'm both excited for all these big names near our city and worried about the potential population explosion. I guess as long as I bump into Henry Selick in Powell's at some point, it'll all be worth it.

At this point my friends must be a bit annoyed with me since I haven't shut up about attending my first Rose City Rollers bout yet. Roller derby -- it's my new favorite sport.

Sure, tattooed girls on roller skates pushing, elbowing, and jamming is worth the price of admission, but somewhere between rollergirls crashing into the crowd and the crazy derby antics, I really got into the game itself. I went for the spectacle, but stayed for the sport.

Not to say the spectacle isn't good. It's great. With skaters named things like Death Trish 2000, Miso Deadly, November Pain (on the Guns N Rollers team), Donna DeDead, and Black Sabbatha how could you not like this sport?

Now if only I could convince Wendy to join up. Her derby name could be Eva Dead 2.

Thanks to Doc Bones for letting me hang out backstage with the free beer.

Sometimes no matter how terrible a movie looks, we are morally obligated to watch it. This was the case with A.I. Assault. The plot, if one can call it that, is about killer war machines given artificial intelligence that (brace yourselves) turn on their creators and go on a killing spree. It's a story so tired that it makes Rip Van Winkle look hopped up on goofballs.

You may be asking yourself, "What on this good Earth could possibly persuade these fine people to watch something so obviously terrible?" It's a question of the highest caliber. Let me answer this magnum of a question with two words: Star Trek.

The cast of this tortuous vehicle includes George Takei (Sulu from "Star Trek"), Robert Picardo from "Star Trek: Voyager," and TV's Worf (Michael Dorn). Also on board are Joshua Cox and Bill Mumy from "Babylon 5" (not "Star Trek," but damn fine sci-fi). Much of the rest of the cast is made up of people who have appeared on "Star Trek" spin-offs and other sci-fi shows.

To top it off, the opening sequence shows a group of scientists and military officers being hunted down by a crazy robot against the background of Vasquez Rocks in Los Angeles. You might recognize this location from such "Star Trek" episodes as "Arena," where Kirk fights the Gorn or "Shore Leave," where Kirk gets the crap kicked out of him by a stereotypical, belligerent, and probably drunk, Irishman. "Fight me, Jimmy. Fight me."

Now, I ask you, how could we not watch this movie? It's like trying to beat the Kobayashi Maru simulation. It's a no-win scenario.

Today (the 6th day of the 6th month of '06), people are going to line the Hawthorne Bridge for Horns Across the Hawthorne. Everybody will throw their horned hands in the air at 6:06 P.M. to be in the "rockingest photo EVER."

You can even buy Horns Across the Hawthorne merchandise.

Although the mano cornuta has quite the history and variety of meanings, you simply cannot, in my opinion, listen to Motorhead or Iron Maiden without a little horned hand action. It's a moral imperative.

On a related note, for all you out there that are extending the thumb with the horns...that is something totally different. That means "I Love You" in sign language. Not even in the same outdoor arena as the corna. Fix that. If Ronnie James Dio says you're doing it wrong, you better listen.

I don't think people believe me when I tell them there is a pirate subculture in Portland. Last year we started seeing more Jolly Roger flags around the city than one would usually expect to see. I'm not exactly sure how many I expect to see on a regular basis, but it was enough that my reaction went beyond "Hey, look. It's a pirate flag" and straight on to "Is that another pirate flag? What is going on in this town?"

A short while later Mike Russell wrote "Pirates Are the New Ninjas" for the Oregonian. Wow. The article forgot to mention Salvador Molly's Pirate Cookin' where they have great food and great drinks and you can throw peanut shells on the floor (I love those places). The article also is without mention of our neighbors at the time, whom we referred to as the Pirates because of the large Jolly Roger flag draped over the front of their house, but I can understand that omission.

If anything, the pirate culture has grown in Portland. This year for the Rose Festival the city finally recognized how important pirates are to the City of Roses. They brought in "tall ships" to fight mock-battles with cannons and give tours of the ships. Tall ships...right. Everybody I heard referred to them as pirate ships. One of the ships was the Lady Washington, which was the Interceptor in "Pirates of the Caribbean." If that's not a pirate ship, I'll eat my three-pointed hat.

As we waited amid the various pirates and sporadic rain showers to get a tour of the ships, a guy was walking down the line answering questions about these "tall ships." A kid in front of us asked him something about pirates. The Q&A guy started into a lecture that was pretty much the "short drop and a sudden stop" speech that Norrington gives young Elizabeth at the beginning of "Pirates of the Caribbean." Basically, pirates are still around and they are bad and evil and "we don't like pirates" because they kill people.

Way to take all the fun out of it, Captain Humorless. I felt bad for the kid. There's a definite difference between the romanticized notion of the pirates of yore and modern pirates. I'm sure there are modern versions of ninjas who are assassins too, but I highly doubt somebody would come down on a 8 year-old for liking ninjas.

As a Portland citizen, I do believe that sort of talk deserves a long walk off a short plank.

Here are some helpful tips for watching the latest installment in the X-Men franchise, X-Men: The Last Stand:

1) Remain in your squeaky theater seat until the credits are over. A friend in the know gave us that valuable bit of information. We stayed and it is well worth it.

2) Silence your cellphone before the movie begins. Although I'm sure you'll remember because there were at least three different PSAs before the movie telling us how polite it is to do so.

The first one is helpful to everyone. The second is good for people who got there late. The third must be for people with Alzheimer's and drug dealers. You got to cover all of your bases, I guess.

3) Read X-Facts by Mike Russell before or after seeing the movie. It doesn't contain spoilers, but it does have more information than the trailers give you. Do read it at some point, though, because it is quite humorous.

4) Don't expect a melodramatic period piece. Not that you would. I'm just saying that if you did you would be extremely disappointed.

5) If, after the film, you're still asking yourself who some of the characters were (there are quite a few of them), go to Wikipedia and spend some time following the links around.