Week of 10/18/2008 - 16:00 to 10/25/2008 - 15:59

Kitty Piercy put a big chunk of her limited campaign money into this TV ad in the tight Eugene mayor's race:

With all the excitement about Obama in a town that voted two-thirds Democrat, it's odd Piercy doesn't mention that she is a Democrat that supports Obama and Jim Torrey ran as a Republican and supported George Bush and the Iraq War.

Here's a couple of YouTube ads from North Eugene High School students that don't miss the Torrey-Bush link:

Remember that Eventful.com thingy where if enough people "requested" Wu-Tang Clan to play their town then the band promised to book a show in said town? And remember how 1,200 Eugene residents "requested" Wu-Tang and so the group said they'd book a show here? Well, they lied. Wu-Tang announced their winter tour today and the closest they come to Eugene is Portland on Nov. 29. Montreal also was promised a Wu-Tang gig, but the East Coast rap group aren't even stepping north of the border. But if you live in Boise, you sure are in luck! As for Eugeneans, maybe sometime in 2010 ...

Pacific Northwest tour dates for Wu-Suck:

11-29 Portland, OR - Roseland Ballroom
11-30 Boise, ID - Knitting Factory
12-01 Seattle, WA - Showbox SoDo
12-03 San Francisco, CA - The Grand Ballroom at the Regency Center

Forget about Joe the plumber, what about Amy the makeup artist and Angela the hairstylist?

The New York Times reports that the McCain campaign pays makeuper Amy Strozzi
$11,400 a week to work on "Carribou Barbie" Palin. That makes Strozzi the highest paid campaign worker on the McCain/Palin payroll.

Joe the plumber makes nowhere near enough to pay more taxes under Obama's tax increase for the rich. But Strozzi might.

Running not far behind the makeup artist is Palin's California hairstylist Angela Lew at $5,000 a week, the Times reports. This on top of reports that the McCain campaign earlier spent $150,000 on designer clothes for Palin.

So much for fiscal conservatism. So much for the average Joe facing mass layoffs. Hundreds of thousands on makeup, hair, designer boots? Think of all the six packs that money could buy.

So I’ve been giving Mariam, EW's high school job shadower, some assignments that I hoped would stoke her creativity and, more importantly, get her to relax at the keyboard and just write. One of those assignments was to write the lamest, shittiest, most clichéd album review ever. Then I thought I might as well join in on the fun and write up a crappy review myself. Decide for yourself whether either of us were successful by clicking HERE or reading below to see both of our reviews for Of Montreal’s Skeletal Lamping. Also, read to the very bottom for details on how to get Skeletal Lamping as a download for FREE!!! (Only one lucky winner, as this contest is merit-based, not a random drawing!)

Is it possible there's anyone still unaware of the Twilight Phenomenon? Y'know, that in which legions of screaming fans (mostly female and of all ages) go batshit crazy for Stephenie Meyer's overwritten supernatural romance about a girl who's totally hot but doesn't know it who falls for the hottest guy EVAR — and finds out he's a vampire? Maybe there is. I'm skeptical. I'm also, clearly, not a big fan, though I will freely admit that I tore through the first book and only afterward felt a little dirty about it. Watching the internet fandom explode when the series' fourth book, Breaking Dawn, came out this summer did make for hours of fun, though. As would reading the mountains of fanfiction, if I could bring myself to do so. (I don't really begrudge anyone their fandom ... I just hope they move on to better books when they're done with it. Also, this stuff is just too easy to mock.)

But now, in a mere month, we'll be given Twilight, the movie. And, somewhat perversely, I'm looking forward to it — and not just because it stars the very pretty Cedric Diggory Robert Pattinson, though that doesn't hurt (nor do his bemused comments about the screaming fandom. Oh, RPattz! How charmingly naive you are!). It just looks so ... indulgent? Goofy? Modestly epic? I'm not quite sure. It comes to us from Catherine Hardwicke, who made the praised-by-many, hated-by-me Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown and The Nativity Story, which, hey, it's OK if that's not ringing any bells, because almost no one saw it.

So ANYWAY (tm Klosterman), what put all this in my head was the email that arrived today bearing the tracklisting for (and a link to a stream of) the Twilight soundtrack. Which, well, huh. This is a little wacky. My first impressions are as follows. And when I say first, I mean I'm typing while I listen. Here goes...

This is NOT an animated .gif image!

It's the album artwork for Animal Collective's forthcoming Merriweather Post Pavilion, due out Jan. 20, 2009. I downloaded the image, opened it in Photoshop, resized the image, then checked it for any mystical digital voodoo before saving it as a JPEG file. Weird.

PictureEugene's YouTube news clips are sometimes hilarious, if often crude, and sometimes just merely amusing. But their coverage of a recent community forum hosted by Mayor Kitty Piercy is quite interesting, especially when compared to a meeting then-mayor Jim Torrey had with his “supporters” back in 2000.

The first clip features a forum on alleged criminal activity in and around Tiny Tavern (and the Whiteaker in general) held at the World Café in September. Can you imagine Jim Torrey ever attending this sort of debate? Particularly without a police escort and several aides at his side? This is Eugene problem-solving at its best (or worst, depending on your opinion).

The next clip shows Eugene Anarchists for Torrey (EAT), a group that purports to support Torrey because his administrations fuels their anarchist fires, as they present their plan for his re-election in 2000. (Have you noticed that tempers have died down since Kitty took office in 2005?) Torrey makes a point to show that he is sleeping during EAT’s presentation and will not answer questions asked of his supporters. While I can’t imagine Piercy would respond with eagerness to such a manipulative tactic, I can at least imagine that she’d act like a human being, and not some slumbering ape.

As this is a bit of a one-sided view, using two clips from left-leaning PictureEugene, if someone has a centrist or right-leaning YouTube response, please post in the comments below.

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There will be a huge yard sale to benefit PictureEugene from 9 am-6 pm at 2427 Agate St. Saturday.