Gossip Should Have No Friends

[August 16th, 2006] SWEET JESUS, IT'S THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER Hey did you hear the one about Jenna Bush at the Jupiter Hotel? According to Jup co-owner Tod Breslau (who coincidentally, was a White House intern in '84, when Jenna's Grandpappy was the VP for Ronald Reagan), one-half of the infamous 24-year-old twins of our esteemed leader holed up with an unidentified "special friend" in one of the bigger suites at the Jupiter Hotel last week. Jenna used an assumed name to book her online reservation, Breslau told Scoop, so it wasn't until her Secret Service detail arrived at the hotel a few days before her arrival that hotel management even knew she was coming to the East Burnside late-night hotspot. According to General Manager Al Munguia, members of the Secret Service told him Jenna had found the Jupiter on the Internet while searching for a hip place to spend two nights in PDX. Did the much-publicized, former underage drinker whoop it up at Doug Fir? No, says hotel management. She went hiking and maintained a low profile at the hipster hideout.

CHANGING ROOMS Scoop's heard whispers that the Kimpton Hotel Group , which owns two luxury boutique hotels in Oregon, will not just change the look of its Fifth Avenue Suites (a "lush Asian theme" is in the works, we hear) by the end of the year, but is also considering changing the hotel's name. In 2007, the Fifth Ave. may be known as Hotel Monaco , in keeping with the moniker of other Kimpton properties in Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

SNOW BLOWN Bite of Oregon organizers were surprise-attacked by bad news 48 hours before Scottish indie-rock band Snow Patrol was set to take the stage last Sunday—terrorism kept their big-name closers at London's Heathrow Airport. (Snow is a crystalline form of a liquid, ya know. ) The Biters scurried to find a replacement but ended up pushing the Subways , Snow Patrol's opener, to the main slot and tossing locals MarchFourth Marching Band into the mix.

SPEAKING OF TERRORISM Is it a brush with disaster or marketing opportunity ? After last week's British terror scare, soapy specialists Lush (803 NW 23rd Ave., 228-5874) saw a glass half full. After liquids, including shampoo and lotion, were banned from international flights and carry-on baggage in the States, the Canuck-based cosmetics company started promoting "solid solutions for difficult times ." Solid beauty products, that is. At first, it might sound like Lush is trying cash in on the War on Terror. But it's exactly the opposite. Remember what Dubya said after 9/11—keep buying! Nothing could anger those jealous jihadis than the combination of two intrinsic American values: consumption and vanity. This soap is the bomb .

WEB-ONLY SCOOP!

CLOSET CASES On Aug. 2, a super-small designer resale shop in Northwest Portland played dress-up with a local lass in dire need of some designer duds for The Look for Less cable bargain makeover show. Seams to Fit (2264 NW Raleigh St., 224-7884) owner Sherry Linder and her daughters/co-owners, Cerissa Pavlov, Ashley and Hannah Linder were contacted by producers from E!'s Style Network after finding them on Citysearch, (Scoop was told The Food Network's Rachael Ray visited the site before making her trip to P-town last year.) As for city searches, Scoop saw with their very own eyes the fashionable crew on gay-ish Southwest Stark Street taping segments for the show scheduled to appear on the network Oct. 15. No word on whether they popped into Spartacus' leather dungeon.

WHAT YOU'RE MISSING AT WW'S LOCALCUT.COM THIS WEEK Pop-experimentalist trio Menomena sits down with Mark Baumgarten to cough up some details about signing to Seattle's Barsuk Records and their new album to be released in early 2007 ... Check out the new, incredibly animated M. Ward video for "Chinese Translation" directed, in part, by Portlander Eric Johnson ... Peruse the incredible, lengthy finalized list of bands slated to take Portland by storm at MusicfestNW ... Jason Simms stays on top of some surprise Thermals shows (at Acme and Tiga), including a first glimpse at an apparently badass new drummer, Lorin Coleman ... Casey Jarman gets Jumbo of the Lifesavas to confess who's on the hip-hop group's upcoming album, Gutterfly: George Clinton and Vernon Reid of Living Colour are a couple notables ... Our Local Cutters keep the daily MP3s coming, including the spacey blip pop of new Portlanders Gingerbread Patriots.