[August 13th, 2008]

WINNERS

1. Not in the face! Beavertonite Mariel Zagunis (right) won Olympic gold by beating fellow American Sada Jacobson in the women’s individual saber competition. The U.S. women’s team swept the event and made Beaverton’s Oregon Fencing Alliance a mecca for Zorros-in-training when Becca Ward, also from Beaverton, defeated Russia’s Sofiya Velikaya for the bronze. It was like a miracle on…whatever it is that fencers fence on.

2. Doug Peterson scored a reprieve when City Commissioners Dan Saltzman, Nick Fish and Sam Adams cut a deal giving his convenience store one last chance to avoid eviction. As a condition for staying in a city building on Southwest Morrison Street, Peterson must cooperate with the DA’s office in any prosecutions stemming from crimes on his store property, and stop selling “individually packaged malt alcohol beverages or single cigarettes.” That’s OK with the Score. We buy Colt 45 by the case.

3. Fortune favors the bold Mayor-elect Sam Adams donned a lead suit to clean up the politically radioactive waste left from last year’s César E. Chávez Boulevard disaster. The botched attempt to rename a street was a huge failure for Mayor Tom Potter. And Adams hopes to lead a successful do-over, which may also affect efforts to rename a street for Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy author Douglas Adams. If it works, Sam Adams will begin his mayoral term with a victory. And if it blows up again? We suspect he’ll survive.

LOSERS

1. Oregonians who backed John Edwards for president got a big helping of humiliation when the former Democratic presidential candidate admitted to having an affair and lying about it. “What a waste of time and energy,” says Portland lawyer Bob Stoll, who gave $2,300 and campaigned for Edwards in Iowa and North Carolina. Fortune also favors those who don’t get caught.

2. Oregon State Police have long observed that pressed-for-time truckers will piss in a bottle and toss it out the window rather than pull over at a rest stop. Sadly for the high-school litter crew that works the stretch in Eastern Oregon of I-84 called “Three Mile Hill,” the number of these “trucker bombs” has jumped from an average of 25 to some 300 urine-filled bottles per cleanup. Get the full story at wweek.com.

3. Who wasn’t cheering last week’s blockbuster trade of future Hall-of-Fame quarterback Brett Favre from Green Bay to the New York Jets? Why, ex-Oregon QB Kellen Clemens. The deal sends Clemens back to the Jets bench and sets off fears among Ducks fanatics that he may take his place among recently failed ex-UO QBs Joey Harrington and Akili Smith. There’s always that coaching gig in Beijing.