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The Slap™️
The Slap™️ Neilson Barnard / Getty Images

Good morning, Portland. I hope you spent some of this past weekend outside, taking selfies with cherry trees, ogling magnolia blossoms, and wondering “Is it just me, or does something smell like semen?” (It’s the unassuming flowers of ornamental pear trees! This is, tragically, not the only semen reference in today’s Good Morning, News.) Today kicks off a spate of temperate but drizzly springtime weather before we tumble into April on Friday. APRIL! Now, for the news:

- People for Portland, a lobbyist group that's raised thousands over the past six months to protest the existence of homelessness in Portland, has unveiled a ballot proposal that would take funding reserved for permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness and put it towards temporary mass shelters and policies that criminalize homeless people. Let me be the first to say: BOOOOOO.

- The Clinton Street Theater is changing hands—but promises to still be the wacky neighborhood theater of your dreams. (And yes, Rocky Horror will continue its weekly run.)

- In other bummer news, a man is suing a Clackamas Red Robin after he was served a salad doused in semen. The lawsuit alleges the befouled salad was not only sexual harassment—but an act of racial discrimination against the Black man who ordered the salad. Just an all-around bleh situation.

- More terrible news: Four unhoused people were killed by a driver who flew into their Salem encampment early Sunday morning. The driver, who was allegedly intoxicated at the time of the incident, has since been arrested. Cars kill, ya’ll.

- Here’s something not awful! The Tillamook Rock Lighthouse is for sale at a reasonable $6.5 million. Built in 1881 and vacant since 1957, the poorly accessible and sea-worn establishment comes with the nickname “Terrible Tilly.” I vote that it becomes a speakeasy for restless mariner ghosts. Venture capitalists, my DMs are open.

- Thank you for your service, Steve:

- ICYMI: Actor Will Smith hit comedian Chris Rock in the face during Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony after Rock made a dumb joke about Jada Pinkett Smith. No less than twenty minutes after committing assault on live TV, Smith won an Oscar for Best Actor.

- Before leaving Poland, where he met with Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war, Biden announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power”—a statement that caused NATO allies to question whether the US is planning on taking down the Russian government. But no, Biden later followed up that he has no plans for a regime change. He just hates Putin (and maybe was a little jet lagged).

- An ice shelf the size of New York City collapsed into the sea in East Antarctica last week, causing alarm by climate scientists who hadn’t expected that portion of Antarctica to be seriously threatened by global warming. It’s the first time an entire ice shelf has sloughed off into the ocean.

- Let’s end with the soothing balm of Beyonce’s full Academy Awards performance of “Be Alive” from the film King Richard, filmed in the Compton tennis court where Venus and Serena Williams practiced as kids.