Gossip Should Have No Friends

[June 21st, 2006] WORLD CUPPED Droves of un-hooligans crowded the new Thirsty Lion Pub , spilling out onto the sunny streets, for Saturday's blood-soaked battle that was the USA-Italy World Cup game . With each flagrant foul (of which there were plenty), the friendly crowd of 250-plus weekend revelers erupted in a collective, lager-fueled roar, which rose to a fever pitch when team USA evened the score. Across the street, Kells Irish Pub was equally crowded, firmly establishing Southwest 2nd Avenue as PDX's World Cup central .

REALLY PG 13 From the folks who brought you the provocative indie flicks Kids, Hedwig & the Angry Inch, Boys Don't Cry, and most recently The Notorious Bettie Page, Killer Films is going to be on location in our very own P-town shooting an upcoming dramedy titled (for now) White & Rice, marking Shawn Ku 's feature-film directorial debut. Which Hollywood starlets are lobbying for lead roles is yet to be determined, but for those of you desperately itching to get a piece of the action, the production is looking for some locals to play the parts of two 13-year-old boys, and one 13-year-old girl . Visit malifinncasting.com for more details and get your youngster one imperative step closer to being featured on the highly addictive and tearfully shameful E! series that is True Hollywood Story.

TOTAL RECALL Way back in 2001, WW reported on the veracity of local author Jennifer Lauck 's heart-wrenching memoir Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found, the bestselling, Oprah-approved book that chronicled a tough childhood full of death, abandonment and religious cults (see "Remembrance of Things Past," WW, Oct. 17, 2001). Lauck's stepbrother Jonathan Lantry called out dozens of events and characters in the book as exaggerations and composites, charging that the book should be termed fiction, not memoir. At the time, WW reported that although Lauck's book "may not represent Truth with a capital T, it represents what she called 'her truth.'" Okaaay. Well, five years and a James Frey scandal later, Lantry's back. Last month, he created blackbirdthetruth.blogspot.com , a site devoted to exposing even more Blackbird "errors and fabrications." Lantry says his renewed attentions to "Jennifer's mendacity" are due to the rumor that Lauck is currently shopping Blackbird as a movie. Lauck did not return Scoop's calls or emails to confirm the film buzz but if you wanna ask the author yourself, she's holding a three-day memoir workshop called "Writing Life" beginning this Friday, June 23, at McMenamins Kennedy School.

NWAIN'T Portland's rep as a shooting-ground for classy cinema continues to grow with Are We Done Yet?, Ice-Cube's latest vehicle o' shame and the sequel to last year's Are We There Yet? Set for release in 2007, in this installment Nick (Cube) and his wife move out of his tiny Portland apartment to a house in "the Oregon country," where everything goes wrong. How? Coz Ice-Cube is crazy as fuck, that's how.