Drenched

The weather gods did not smile on Portland Halloween. Just when the kids were heading out for early evening trick-or-treating, the rains really started coming down... I did manage to get out there among them, though. My costume was an old guy walking to Whole Foods to pick up some eggs...

World Series Game 7 is tonight. Baseball doesn't get any higher-stakes than that... But I dunno, baseball in November? And they've been showing one Christmas-themed ad during the games for at least a week now... While the game gets played indoors... In Canada...

Speaking of commercials, I wish Mr. Brain Worm would hurry up with his promise to get prescription drug ads off the tube... Here I am trying to enjoy a can of Pringles while watching the game, and every 10 minutes they're pounding me with long pitches about moderate-to-severe Crohn's disease... "Side effects include vomiting and diarrhea"... I hope the other advertisers realize that at the very first sign of a drug ad, I hit "mute"... Or fast forward... Or switch to a different channel...

Before I watched my recording of the Series last night, I noticed that the system had also taped me a Trail Blazer game... I thought, "Now that they've gotten rid of the coach I don't like, and the owner I don't like is on her way out too, maybe I should watch a little." I sat through the whole thing, zapping through the ads, and dang, I wasn't disappointed!... The energetic, young Blazers kept it close all night against the creaky old Denver Nuggets, and in an exciting finish, Portland pulled it out... The Moda is going to be a real unhappy place for those playoff-bound teams who think they can fax in their nights here and still get the W... At the moment the Blazers are 4-2 and tied for third place in the West...

Nervous times here in toney inner-northeast Portland. One of our many resident coyotes attacked a 9-year-old kid in a backyard in the Alameda neighborhood the other day... The child, though bitten, was not seriously injured. Still, ya really gotta watch the little ones... I'm surprised the predators aren't satisfied chowing down on the many, many bunnies we have running around, especially at night... But the 'hotays will eat anything... We lost a cat to a roving pack a few years back...

Have you heard this singer Ledisi (pronounced "Lettucey")? She's been around for a while, but I just stumbled across her new album dedicated to Dinah Washington. It's impressive... If Ledisi shows up to do a gig, I'll be there... Hey, PDX Jazz, how about it?

The Oregon Supreme Court will finally get around to hearing arguments this week in the gun control ballot measure case... It's been exactly three years since the common-sense measure was approved, but it takes that long for the folks in the black muu-muus to be bothered... Who knows how long it will take them to write up their opinions and issue a judgment? Meanwhile, the bodies pile up... That, ladies and gents, is a wee bit of what we used to call a disgrace...

Another bummer: It's made the news that Powell's Books is in trouble. Say, what?... If you don't believe that downtown is still in deep, deep kim chee, look no further than that... Maybe we should all do as we did with Higgins Restaurant and show up at Powell's merely for the sake of buying something... Just be sure to budget your $6.60 to park on the street...

Jeff Knight is the former dining and entertainment columnist of the Jersey Journal. Send news tips to Jeff at jeffknightpdx@gmail.com.