Gossip should have no friends

[February 6th, 2008]

»NIPPLE BOWL: Although Oregon’s lack of a pro football team prevents its playing in the big game, PDX’s own Food Chain Films scored a touchdown in Super Bowl commercials . Food Chain was the behind the 30-second AMP Energy Drink commercial that aired during the fourth quarter. It depicts a chubby truck driver (played by Donkey Lips, a.k.a. Michael Bower from Nickelodeon’s Salute Your Shorts ) who tries to start a woman’s car by attaching jumper cables to his nipples and dancing. According to Food Chain Executive Producer Brad Goldthwaite, the spot, which wasn’t originally slated for the Super Bowl, now sits at No. 25 on USA Today ’s Super Bowl Ad Meter, beating out ads from Doritos and Bud Light.

»sang sung: Has Portland’s PDX Pop Now! festival graduated to the big leagues? Maybe not, but the new logo for the 2008 edition is decidedly more, um, mature. Designed by celebrated visual artist Emek , often known as “the thinking man’s poster artist,” the new design ditches last year’s cute bubble letters in favor of a black and red couple who literally bleed rock ’n’ roll . It looks like a gothic version of the classic Milton-Bradley game Operation. Emek, who has designed posters for Neil Young, Radiohead and the Flaming Lips, recently had Billboard magazine place three of his works on its list of the 25 best rock posters of all time . Info on the festival and the full-color, poster (complete with beating instrument-hearts!) can be found at pdxpopnow.com.

»FLAME ON: A local biofuel company is expanding its reach to the motherland of “Big Oil.” On Tuesday, Feb. 5, at 3 pm, Al Jazeera TV featured an interview with Tacee Webb , the former vintage clothing store owner who now owns and operates Southeast Portland’s Lovecraft Biofuels. She assumes the Middle Eastern news channel got her name from CNN, which recently featured Lovecraft. “I showed Al Jazeera’s estimated 100 million mostly Arabic viewers how to convert their vehicles to run on vegetable oil,” says Webb, who knows she’s invading enemy territory with regard to the global economy. “I am much less concerned about changing ideas within the Muslim world as I am by challenging the motives of big oil in the U.S.,” says Webb, who thinks we should be getting our gas off grocery shelves and not at the pumps. “Big oil needs to be a boutique.”

»FOUR LEGS, 17 SYLLABLES: On long road trips, most of us read books or take a nap. But Anna and Clara Gustafson , two teen sisters from Portland’s St. Mary’s Academy, wrote haikus. About yaks. During a road trip in Tibet with their family, the girls observed that Tibetan culture was still vibrant in the countryside, symbolized by the ubiquitous yak. Yaku ($19.95), their new collection of haikus , is a series of musings on the scruffy animal, ranging from wistful to silly. Here’s one: “Behold! Awesome yak!/ Come visit me in Tibet./ Yak, yak-i-tee, yak.” Available Friday, Feb. 8, at Wallace Books (7241 SE Milwaukie Ave., 235-7350) .

»PLANES, TRAINS&WEATHER DELAYS: Portlanders attempting to traverse our snowy passes weren’t the only ones affected by this winter’s cruel storms. Metro’s main man, David Bragdon , and nearly 20 of his closest friends were to leave Portland’s Union Station by train Friday afternoon, Feb. 1, and arrive in San Francisco the next morning in celebration of his friend Casey Hammond’s 50th birthday. Trouble was, a mudslide in the Siskiyous closed the tracks between Portland and the Bay Area last week and looks to stayed closed through mid-February. A train lover since childhood, Bragdon soon had his dreams of chugging down the tracks overnight à la North by Northwest with his closet buds on the Coast Starlight dashed by a speedy excursion on a quickie commuter flight.